The original Pali version having perished in India, Buddhaghosa, during his residence in the Mahā-vihāre at Anuradhapura, re-translated it from Sinhalese to Pali. His version supplanted the Sinhalese (since lost) and is now the only record remaining of the ancient tradition. He also wrote elaborate commentaries (_Aṭṭha kathā_)[2] on almost every part of the Tri-piṭaka and composed the _Visuddhi magga_, an extensive and systematic treatise on Buddhist doctrine, a veritable cyclopædia of Buddhist theology. His writings are regarded as absolute authorities in the interpretation of the Buddhist scriptures, and he is regarded as the second founder of Buddhism in Ceylon. He is held in high reverence also in Burma as the founder of Buddhism in that country (450 of the Christian era), having taken the Buddhist scriptures there from Ceylon. Buddhaghosa's commentary on the _Dhammapada_ mentions the occasions on which, and the audiences to whom, most of the verses were addressed by Buddha when, as an itinerant preacher, he went with his followers through the land--mid-Ganges valley and sub-Himalayan tract in the modern provinces of Agra, Oude and Behar; his watchwords--not wealth, fame or dominion, but peace, happiness, deliverance from the burden of sorrow and death, and his message: "Open ye your ears, the deliverance from death is found."[3] When he first attained enlightenment under the Bodhi-tree (at Buddha Gāya), a descendant of which still flourishes in Anuradhapura, the oldest historical tree in the world, Buddha is said to have broken out into a song of triumph which is included in the anthology of the _Dhammapada_ (153-4) and has been spiritedly rendered by Mr. Woodward: Through many a round of birth and death I ran, Nor found the builder that I sought. Life's stream Is birth and death and birth with sorrow filled. Now house-holder, thou'rt seen! no more shalt build! Broken are all thy rafters, split thy beam! All that made up this mortal self is gone; Mind hath slain craving. I have crossed the stream! The way that he claimed to have discovered is known as the Middle Way (_Majjhimā Paṭipadā_), equally removed from an ignoble life of pleasure and a gloomy life of mortification, and consists in a realisation of the Four Great Truths (_cattāri ariya saccāni_) of suffering, its origin, its end and the path thereto. All existence, he declares, is suffering, its origin is desire, its end is the extinction of desire, to be attained by the Eightfold Path (_aṭṭhangiko maggo_) of right belief, right resolve, right speech, right act, right occupation, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration and tranquillity.[4] The exposition and illustration of the Truths and the Way fill numerous tomes of the Buddhist scriptures.