Abhidhammāvatāra-purāṇaṭīkā

The older of the two subcommentaries on Buddhadatta's Abhidhammāvatāra — purāṇa, “old”, only to keep it apart from the much longer new one, the Abhidhammatthavikāsinī of Sumaṅgala of the Nandipariveṇa.

It is short, it carries no opening verses and no closing colophon, and it does not comment on the Abhidhammāvatāra's introductory verses at all — an omission odd enough that Hinüber stops to record it.

Its author is a tradition rather than a signature. The Sāsanavaṃsa gives it to Vācissara Mahāsāmithera, who is placed in the 1200s CE; nothing in the book itself confirms this, and no closer date can be given. The same Vācissara wrote the Sīmālaṅkāra and the Sīmālaṅkārasaṅgaha, two of the manuals on monastic boundaries named in the Kalyāṇī inscription of 1476 CE.