Moggallānabyākaraṇa

The Moggallānabyākaraṇa itself — the sutta text of the second school's grammar, also called the Saddalakkhaṇa. Moggallāna wrote the vutti on it and his own commentary, the Moggallānapañcikā, as well.

Moggallāna founded the second school of Pali grammar, and the date of his work is fixed by a political event: his colophon says it was written in the reign of Parakkamabāhu, after the king had purged the Saṅgha of heretical monks — about 1165 CE. He lived at the Thūpārāma at Anurādhapura.

What made his school worth founding is that he took Pali more seriously as a language than his predecessors had. He treats it more exhaustively and with a better sense of its character, differs considerably in arrangement and terminology, and notices things the others had walked past — the existence of short e and o, for one. He was nonetheless a borrower: the earlier Pali grammars stand behind him, and so do the Kātantra, Pāṇini and above all Candragomin.