Buddhaghosa ［仏音］ (n.d.) (Pali;  Button): A Buddhist scholar of India in the fifth century. Born to a Brahman family near Buddhagayā, he became learned in the Vedas. Later the Buddhist monk Revata converted him to Buddhism. In order to study commentaries on the three divisions of the Buddhist canon, he went to Sri Lanka and lived in a monastery called Abhayagiri-vihāra. Later he moved to another monastery, Mahāvihāra, and there studied the Pali canon and Sinhalese Buddhist commentaries. Buddhaghosa translated these Sinhalese commentaries into Pali, and also wrote a number of commentaries on the three divisions of the Buddhist canon. The Visuddhimagga (“The Way of Purification”), a compendium of Buddhist doctrine he wrote in Pali, served to systematize the doctrines of Theravāda.