The Abhidhamma Pitaka is one of the three divisions of the Pali Canon, alongside the Vinaya and the Sutta collections. Where the Suttas record discourses, the Abhidhamma rearranges their content into a systematic, scholastic analysis — categories of mind and matter, conditions and relations, set out in a formal and highly structured idiom. The books that make up the division are the Dhammasangani, Vibhanga, Dhatukatha, Puggalapannatti, Kathavatthu, Yamaka and Patthana. This is one instalment in the Abhidharma sequence of A. P. de Soysa's Sinhala rendering, published in Colombo by S. Godage.
The text is entirely in Sinhala. There is no English translation or parallel English text. Buyers outside Sri Lanka should order it only if they read Sinhala, or want it for a Sinhala-reading household, temple or library collection.
A. P. de Soysa — the name also appears as de Zoysa — translated the Tripitaka into Sinhala on his own, working towards a readership outside the monastic and scholarly circles that had long held the Pali texts. Mahinda Deegalle's study of the first Sinhala Tripitaka translation, published in the Vidyodaya Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, treats the project in those terms: a vernacular canon intended for ordinary readers. The Buddhist Publication Society uses de Soyza's translations for the Sinhala text on its online Tipitaka.
Other volumes of the Abhidharma Pitakaya are catalogued under the same translator's name in the National Library of Sri Lanka union catalogue, and this one belongs with them as part of a continuing set rather than a standalone commentary or introduction. It is a translation of canonical material, not an exposition or a guide, and it reads accordingly — the Abhidhamma's own repetitive, analytical structure carried over into Sinhala.
It will suit Sinhala readers working through the canon in sequence, students of Buddhist doctrine who want the Abhidhamma in a vernacular rather than Pali form, and collectors assembling de Soysa's Tripitaka translation volume by volume. Godage Publishers is an established Colombo house issuing books in Sinhala and English, with a long-running list of Buddhist and religious titles.
- Author: Dr. A. P. De Soysa
- Publisher: Godage Publishers
- Published: 2015
- Language: Sinhala
- Pages: 192
- ISBN: 978-955-30-5789-1
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