Hatthavanagallavihāravaṃsa

The chronicle of a single monastery — Hatthavanagalla, Sinhalese Attanagalu, about thirty kilometres east of Colombo.

Its story is one of the hardest in the literature. King Siri Saṅghabodhi abdicated and withdrew to the forest; his successor put a price on his head; and the king gave his own head to a poor villager, and so showed himself a Bodhisatta.

It sits between two genres, and the book is more interesting for that. It reports events attached to sacred places as a vaṃsa does, but it keeps measuring the king's virtues against the Bodhisatta's as the Jātakas tell them, which brings it close to an avadāna.

Its dating is by the calendar of other books: the chronicle ends in the reign of Parakkamabāhu II (1234–1269 CE) and is first cited in the Pūjāvaliya in 1266 CE. The author does not name himself, but he was plainly at home in Sanskrit literature — Malalasekera found him familiar with such works as the Jātakamālā and Bāṇa's Kādambarī.