SOAS Research Online

Abstract

The present work is an attempt to describe the state of Buddhism in Ceylon up to the fifth century A.D. and is based on the Pali Commentaries of that century. It is divided into two parts. Part I forms a necessary introduction to Part II. Its first chapter gives a brief survey of the Pali Commentaries and their authors; the next two deal with their sources; and the last one with the nature of their contents. Part II consists of ten chapters. The first gives a short account of the religious conditions in Ceylon prior to the advent of Mihinda. The second deals with the advent of this missionary and the establishment of the Buddhist religion. In the three succeeding chapters it in shown how the faith spread throughout the country, and how the growing influence of the religion was checked from time to time by political and other causes. The growth of dissentient schools forms the contents of the sixth. The seventh chapter is more or less geographies' and gives a brief account of the principal centres of Buddhism in Ceylon Mention is also made here of the various monasteries that are referred to in the Commentaries. The next two Chapters give a survey of Buddhism as n religion of the masses, describing how it affected the life of the people and how various forms of rite and ritual grew and became part of the popular religion. Finally, the attitude of the Ceylonese Buddhist towards the deities both Indian and local is discussed in the tenth chapters. An effort has been made in the fourth chapter of Part I and in the sixth, ninth and tenth chapters of Part II to estimate how far the Buddhism in Ceylon of the 5th century A.D. differed from the original faith.