Suttavandanā

Suttavandanā, “homage to the discourses” — verses saluting not the Buddha but the teaching, opening Dhammaṃ lokassa desentaṃ, dhammarājaṃ namāmahaṃ, “I salute the King of the Dhamma, who teaches the Dhamma to the world”.

It runs on through the Buddhas, the paccekabuddhas and the qualities of the teaching, and ends in a wish for whoever recites it: that within sixteen years he become a bearer of the three piṭakas and reach the far shore of every craft and field of knowledge. A devotional text with a curriculum inside it.

The text names no author and no initiator, and that is a fact about the text, not a gap in the searching. A scan of its opening and closing found no ganthārambhakathā, no colophon and no place name anywhere in it, and no source on file names the work. No date can be given.

The Cūḷagandhavaṃsa names several collections of vandanā verses in its catalogue — the Anantabuddhavandanagāthā, the Aṭṭhavīsati-buddhavandanagāthā, the Atītānāgatapaccuppannavandanagāthā, the Asītimahāsāvakavandanagāthā — and says of the class that such verses “were made by wise men in Laṅkādīpa and other places”.