Re: 1915 Burmese "-suci" (Abhidhanappadipikasuci)

I remain generally baffled by the history & authorship of these
"-suci" texts.  I twice happened upon such texts in Sri Lanka (I
believe I mentioned them in my postings of the time) and they had
extremely scant information on their origins and authorship --but they
seemed to be largely (if not wholly?) modern concoctions --but I do
not understand in what way they are concocted from classical
components.

One text seemed to gather together word-glosses from the commentaries
in a more lexical schema; this is unsurprising for a modern Sinhalese
author, but I would be interested to know what earlier precedents
there are for this (if any) or in what way the Burmese tradition
differs from it.

I think that several of Jim's proposed projects on this list would
ammount to the creation of an electronic "suci" --and the genre seems
well-suited to the digital era.  However, I still really do not feel
that I understand what the genre is, and there is no information on
these texts in Hinuber's _Handbook_, etc. --so I surmise that they are
considered derivative texts, not original compositions from the
standpoint of philology?

E.M.