Abhidhammāvatāra, Nāmarūpapariccheda, Paramatthavinicchaya, Saccasaṅkhepa

Four handbooks in one volume, and the heading names only the first. The Abhidhammāvatāra in twenty-four chapters, the Nāmarūpapariccheda in thirteen, the Paramatthavinicchaya in twenty-nine under five headings, and the Saccasaṅkhepa in five — which is why the book closes Saccasaṅkhepo niṭṭhito. They belong to a set of seven short Abhidhamma texts that Burma treats as a unit and calls the “little finger manuals”.

Two authors, and two quite different kinds of date. The Abhidhammāvatāra, “Introduction to the Abhidhamma”, is Buddhadatta's, by its own closing verses; with the Rūpārūpavibhāga it is the earliest surviving attempt to sum the Abhidhamma up, and tradition makes Buddhadatta a contemporary of Buddhaghosa — 400–450 CE. The other three are given to Anuruddha, whose date is uncertain and is usually put at 900–1100 CE.

The Paramatthavinicchaya is the fullest of the four: the whole Abhidhamma in 39 chapters and 1,146 verses. Its closing verses are unusually forthcoming — Anuruddha a South Indian from Kāverīnagara in the kingdom of Kāñcī, living at Tanja, with the Mahāvihāra named and Saṅghavisettha as the monk who asked for the work. The Nāmarūpapariccheda covers only part of the subject, in 1,845 verses, and rests on the older commentaries, “following the way of exposition of those who dwell in the Mahāvihāra”; only its colophon names Anuruddha. The Abhidhammāvatāra is written in mixed verse and prose, each chapter closing in triṣṭubh where the rest of the literature would use śloka.