Visuddhimagga nidānakathā

This is not an ancient text. It is the introductory account prefixed to the Visuddhimagga in the Sixth Council edition, and its colophon says so: Chaṭṭhasaṅgītibhāranitthārakasaṅghasamitiyā pakāsitāyaṃ … Visuddhimagganidānakathā niṭṭhitā — published by the Saṅgha association that carried the burden of the Sixth Council. The name given in the text is Ghosaka Thera.

The Sixth Council sat at Rangoon in 1954–1956 CE, marking the 2,500th anniversary of the Buddha's birth by the oriental reckoning. What it produced is the edition this whole printed collection depends on. A draft of the Tipiṭaka, the commentaries and the subcommentaries was prepared from the Fifth Council edition and revised against texts from other countries. It was then checked and re-edited by a large number of Burmese mahātheras, and at the same time by a smaller number of Sinhalese monks. The final text was settled by boards of Burmese, Sinhalese and Thai reviewers. The council itself, spread over two years, was the ceremonial recitation and formal confirmation of what those boards had settled.

So this volume is the edition's own account of where the Visuddhimagga came from — the twentieth century introducing the fifth.