Khuddasikkhā-mūlasikkhā

Two short manuals of training for novices, printed here as one volume: the Khuddasikkhā and the Mūlasikkhā. They are the beginner's end of the Vinaya literature, and they know it — the standard they assume is far below Buddhadatta's Vinayavinicchaya.

The dating runs through other books, and lands inside 450–600 CE. The Khuddasikkhā is by Dhammasiri, who also wrote a ganthipada; that the two are the same man is settled by a verse of the Khuddasikkhā quoted in Vajirabuddhi's work, which places Dhammasiri after Buddhaghosa and before Ānanda of Kalasapura. The Mūlasikkhā is anonymous; an unidentified Burmese tradition gives it to a “Mahāsāmi”, which is a title, not a name.

Both books have a firm floor under them: they are named in the Parakkamabāhu-Katikāvata of 1165 CE. It rules that a monk unable to memorise the Pātimokkhasutta, the Khuddasikkhā and two Suttantas should at least learn the Sekhiya rules and the Mūlasikkhā — which shows that the Mūlasikkhā was treated as the simpler of the two. Both are arranged for use rather than for study, with the verse interrupted by prose wherever a kammavācā has to be quoted. Both also drop the rules that no longer applied: the Khuddasikkhā leaves out Saṅghādisesa X–XIII, and the Mūlasikkhā VI and VII as well, which govern the building of very primitive monasteries.