Commentaries

Works written to explain another text rather than to stand as one, and which their traditions came to treat as authoritative in their own right. The Rabbinic corpus dominates the group, from the Mishnah and the Tosefta through the Gemara to the Talmud, the Midrash, the Targums and Pirkei Avot, alongside the Tibetan Tengyur, the Tantraloka and the Milindapanha. In several traditions the commentary became more studied than the work it comments on. Commentaries whose traditions stop short of granting them that standing, among them the Summa Theologiae, the Institutes of the Christian Religion and the great tafsirs of al-Tabari and Ibn Kathir, are filed under Other Writings.