An Abhidhamma treatise by Buddhadatta of Uragapura. The book was written in India in the Cola country. It is an introduction to the study of the Abhidhamma, and there is much similarity between it and the Visuddhi Magga, though Buddhadatta's diction is less involved and ambiguous than that of Buddhaghosa; his vocabulary is extraordinarily rich and his style more graphic.
The work is mostly in verse with, here and there, a prose commentary supplied by the author himself (Gv.69; see P.L.C. 107-8 for details).
Two tíkás on it exist, one by Vácissara Mahásámi of the Mahávihara and the other by Sumangala, pupil of Sáriputta. Sás.34.
Gv. (p.69) says that Buddhadatta wrote it at the request of his pupil Sumati.