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BUDDHAGHOSA  celebrated Buddhist writer . He was a Brahmin by birth and was born near the great Bodhi tree at Budh Gaya in north India about A.D . 390, his father's name being Kesi . His teacher, Revata, induced him to go to Ceylon, where the commentaries on the scriptures had been preserved in the Sinhalese language, with the object of translating them into Pali . He went accordingly to Anuradhapura, studied there under Sanghapala, and asked leave of the fraternity there to translate the commentaries . With their consent he then did so, having first shown his ability by writing the work Visuddhi Magga (the Path of Purity, a kind of summary of Buddhist doctrine) . When he had completed his many years' labours he returned tothe neighbourhood of the Bodhi tree in north India . Before he came to Ceylon he had already written a book entitled Nanodaya (the Rise of Knowledge), and had commenced a commentary on the principal psychological manual contained in the Pitakas . This latter work he afterwards rewrote in Ceylon, as the present text (now published by the Pali Text Society) shows . One volume of the Sumangala Vilasini (a portion of the commentaries mentioned above) has been edited, and extracts from his comment on the Buddhist canon law . This last work has been discovered in a nearly comtemporaneous Chinese translation (an edition in Pali is based on a comparison with that translation) . The works here mentioned form, however, only a small portion of what Buddhaghosa wrote .

His

industry must have been prodigious . He is known to have written books that would fill about 20 octavo volumes of about 400 pages each; and there are other writings ascribed to him which may or may not be really his work . It is too early therefore to attempt a criticism of it . But it is already clear that, when made acceptable, it will be of the greatest value for the history of Indian literature and of Indian ideas . So much is uncertain at present in that history for want of definite dates that the voluminous writings of an author whose date is approximately certain will afford a standard by which the age of other writings can be tested . And as the original commentaries in Sinhalese are now lost his works are the only evidence we have of the traditions then handed down in the Buddhist community . The main source of our information about Buddhaghosa is the Mahavamsa, written in Anuradhapura about fifty years after he was working there . But there are numerous references to him in Pali books on Pali literature; and a Burmese author of unknown date, but possibly of the 15th century, has compiled a biography of him, the Buddhagkos' Uppatti, of little value and no critical judgment . See Mahavamsa, ch. xxxvii . (ed . Turnour, Colombo, 1837) ; " Gandhavamsa," p . 59, in Journal of the Pali Text Society (1886) ; Buddhghosuppatti (text and translation, ed. by E .

Gray, London, r893) ; Sumangala Vilasini, edited by T . W . Rhys Davids and J . E . Carpenter, vol. i . (London, Pali Text Society, 1886) . (T . W . R .