Telakaṭāhagāthā

“The verses spoken in a pot of boiling oil” — ninety-eight verses of vasantatilakā setting out the teaching in nine short chapters.

The title refers to an occasion the poem itself never mentions, and the story comes in two versions: the Mahāvaṃsa has a wrongly accused Thera thrown into the sea, the Rasavāhinī has him boiled in oil. Neither author nor title nor date is named anywhere in the text.

But it has a hard lower limit, and it is an inscription. Verses 2–4 are quoted in the Noen Sara Bua inscription at Prachinburi in Thailand, by Buddhasiri, dated Śaka 683 — that is 761 CE. The exact year is not beyond doubt, but the century seems fairly certain; the poem is also taken to be older than the Rasavāhinī. It was edited by E. R. Goonaratne in the Journal of the Pali Text Society.