this self-effacing, almost anonymous commentator’s proneness to being loved or hated, exalted or reviled, is certainly one of the least expected outcomes of Buddhist history.

one traditional account of Buddhaghosa’s own death has the moribund commentator mentally revising the three meanings of the word ‘death’ while expiring, and it seems clear that this, rather than a parody of pedantic intellectualism, was intended as praise

On modern Theravāda’s ongoing struggle to appraise the legacy of their tradition’s greatest scholar.