A Sinhala-language devotional work on the sixteen great knowledges — the solasa maha gnana — of Buddhist tradition. The whole text is in Sinhala, with no English translation, so reading it requires the language.
The subject is wisdom understood as the light that destroys the film of ignorance. The sixteen great knowledges are the forms wisdom takes, classified according to how it functions and what characterises it. A full exposition of them is given by the Venerable Sariputta — foremost in wisdom among the Buddha's disciples, and called Dhammasenapati — in the Solasa Panna Niddesa of the Mahapanna Katha, part of the Patisambhidamagga in the Khuddaka Nikaya of the Sutta Pitaka. That complete and extraordinary comprehension of the sixteen belonged to the Buddha himself; the Solasa Maha Gnana Vandanawa is the act of recollecting and venerating it.
The book sits in the devotional rather than the scholarly register: its material is canonical, drawn from the Abhidhamma-adjacent analysis of the Patisambhidamagga, but its purpose is recitation and reverence. It will suit Sinhala readers who already keep a practice of vandana and want one grounded in a specific doctrinal scheme.
Published by M. D. Gunasena & Co., a Colombo house publishing in Sinhala and English.
- Publisher: M. D. Gunasena & Co. (Pvt) Ltd
- Language: Sinhala
- ISBN: 9789552133428
Browse the rest of our book collection.
