Even in its main outline the story is not very coherent for one would imagine that, if a Buddhist from Magadha went to Ceylon to translate the Sinhalese commentaries, his object must have been to introduce them among Indian Buddhists.  But there is no evidence that Buddhaghosa did this and he is for us simply a great figure in the literary and religious history of Ceylon.  Burmese tradition maintains that he was a native of Thaton and returned thither, when his labours in Ceylon were completed, to spread the scriptures in his native language.  This version of his activity is intelligible, though the evidence for it is weak.

He composed a great corpus of exegetical literature which has been preserved, but, since much of it is still unedited, the precise extent of his labours is uncertain.  There is however little doubt of the authenticity of his commentaries on the four great Nikayas, on the Abhidhamma and on the Vinaya (called Samanta-pasadika) and in them[78] he refers to the Visuddhi-magga as his own work.  He says expressly that his explanations are founded on Sinhalese materials, which he frequently cites as the opinion of the ancients (porana).  By this word he probably means traditions recorded in Sinhalese and attributed to Mahinda, but it is in any case clear that the works which he consulted were considered old in the fifth century A.D.  Some of their names are preserved in the Samanta-pasadika where he mentions the great commentary (Maha-Atthakatha), the Raft commentary (Paccari, so called because written on a raft), the Kurundi commentary composed at Kurunda-Velu and others.[79] All this literature has disappeared and we can only judge of it by Buddhaghosa’s reproduction which is probably not a translation but a selection and rearrangement.  Indeed his occasional direct quotations from the ancients or from an Atthakatha imply that the rest of the work is merely based on the Sinhalese commentaries.

Buddhaghosa was not an independent thinker but he makes amends for his want of originality not only by his industry and learning but by his power of grasping and expounding the whole of an intricate subject.  His Visuddhi-magga has not yet been edited in Europe, but the extracts and copious analysis[80] which have been published indicate that it is a comprehensive restatement of Buddhist doctrine made with as free a hand as orthodoxy permitted.  The Mahavamsa observes that the Theras held his works in the same estimation as the Pitakas.  They are in no way coloured by the Mahayanist tenets which were already prevalent in India, but state in its severest form the Hinayanist creed, of which he is the most authoritative exponent.  The Visuddhi-magga is divided into three parts treating of conduct (silam), meditation (samadhi) and knowledge (panna), the first being the necessary substratum for the religious life of which the others are the two principal branches.  But though he intersperses his exposition with miraculous stories and treats exhaustively of superhuman powers, no trace of the worship of Mahayanist Bodhisattvas is found in his works and, as for literature, he himself is the chief authority for the genuineness and completeness of the Pali Canon as we know it.