What little evidence we have as regards the particular work now in question seems to me to tend very strongly in the other direction. Buddhaghosa could scarcely have commenced his labours on the Jātaka Commentary, leaving the works I have mentioned--so much more important from his point of view--undone. Now I would ask the reader to imagine himself in Buddhaghosa’s position, and then to read carefully the opening words of our Jātaka Commentary as translated below, and to judge for himself whether they could possibly be such words as Buddhaghosa would probably, under the circumstances, have written. It is a matter of feeling; but I confess I cannot think it possible that he was the author of them. Three Elders of the Buddhist Order are there mentioned with respect, but neither the name of Revata, Buddhaghosa’s teacher in India, nor the name of Saŋghāpali, his teacher in Ceylon, is even referred to; and there is not the slightest allusion either to Buddhaghosa’s conversion, his journey from India, the high hopes he had entertained, or the work he had already accomplished! This silence seems to me almost as convincing as such negative evidence can possibly be. If not however by Buddhaghosa, the work must have been composed after his time; but probably not long after. It is quite clear from the account in the Mahāvaŋsa, that before he came to Ceylon the Siŋhalese commentaries had not been turned into Pāli; and on the other hand, the example he had set so well will almost certainly have been quickly followed. We know one instance at least, that of the Mahāvaŋsa itself, which would confirm this supposition; and had the present work been much later than his time, it would not have been ascribed to Buddhaghosa at all. It is worthy of notice, perhaps, in this connexion, that the Pāli work is not a translation of the Siŋhalese Commentary. The author three times refers to a previous Jātaka Commentary, which possibly formed part of the Siŋhalese work, as a separate book;[76] and in one case mentions what it says only to overrule it.[77] Our Pāli work may have been based upon it, but cannot be said to be a mere version of it. And the present Commentary agrees almost word for word, from p. 58 to p. 124 of my translation, with the MADHURA-ATTHA-VILĀSINĪ, the Commentary on the ‘Buddhavaŋsa’ mentioned above, which is not usually ascribed to Buddhaghosa.[78]