Hi Everett,

> I tried to chase down the von Hinüber reference; was it to _A

Handbook

> of Pali Literature_, 1996?
>
> There, in section 262, he calls Kumaarakassapa the 'initiator' of

the

> work, rather than the author or translator. That would seem to fit
> with 'abhiyaacito'.
>
> "262. The initiator of the anonymous Dhp-a is the otherwise unknown
> Thera Kumaarakassapa who intended to make the commentary known

beyond

> the Island by a tranlsation from Sinhalese (Dhp-a I2 1,11-13)"

Thanks for the clarification, very helpful. O. von Hinüber is
exhonerated. I don't have his book and I was only acting on the
information given in this thread.

> About Buddhaghosa's traditional authorship, is one reason people are
> reluctant to believe it simply that the explanatory portions of the

Dhp-

> a (as opposed to the narratives) are of very low quality (not
> consistent with the work of the author of the Visuddhimagga etc)?

I generally accept the traditional authorship of Pali works. I haven't
worked much with Dhp-a, but from my reading of some of the
word-by-word glosses, it never occurred to me that they were of low
quality. It could be that they are different from Buddhaghosa's style
in the Visuddhimagga. I haven't studied the introductory verses of
Dhp-a, so I'm not sure if the same applies there, but my understanding
is that these commentaries of Buddhaghosa are translations from old
Sinhalese commentaries and so the word-by-word glosses probably don't
originate with Buddhaghosa himself. In my opinion, the a.t.thakathaas
originated with the a.t.thakathaacariyas, all of whom were arahants
belonging to the first few centuries of the saasana.

Later, I'll have a look at the line you quoted from Dhp-a in your
subsequent post which I found very interesting.

Best wishes,
Jim