Aṭṭhakathā

The questions and answers of the Sixth Council on the commentaries.

The Sixth Council sat at Rangoon in 1954–1956 CE, marking the 2,500th anniversary of the Buddha's birth by the oriental reckoning — and the edition it produced is the text this whole printed collection is set from.

What the council actually did is not what the word suggests. The editorial work came first. 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 body of Burmese mahātheras, and at the same time by a smaller body of Sinhalese monks. The final readings were settled — “not without argument” — 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 already decided.

Cambodia and Laos were invited but could send no one to the scrutiny meetings, though both are reported to have assented to the decisions.

This volume is the record of the argument, not of the ceremony — the questions put and the answers given as the readings were settled, which is why it belongs on the shelf beside the texts rather than behind them.