Abhidhammavatara (Pali, also Abhidhammāvatāra), according to Encyclopædia Britannica is "the earliest effort at systematizing, in the form of a manual, the doctrines dealt with in the Abhidhamma (scholastic) section of the Theravada Buddhist canon. According to Rupert Gethin, the Abhidhammāvatāra (‘Introduction to Abhidharma’) was "written in the fifth century by Buddhadatta, a contemporary of Buddhaghosa." Buddhadatta was a poet and scholar in the region of the Kaveri River, in southern India".