Sinhalese Buddhism is Theravada, and its claim to importance is documentary as much as devotional. The Pali canon was committed to writing on the island in the first century BCE, and the commentarial tradition that Buddhaghosa organised in the fifth century of the common era was compiled there too. Richard Gombrich's study of village practice in the highlands describes the working religion that sits on top of that inheritance, in which monks are supported and merit is made, and in which doctrine and practice are related without being identical.
The relic of the tooth, held at Kandy, has been a political object for as long as it has been a religious one, since possession of it was understood to legitimate rule. John Strong's study traces both its cult and the Western accounts of it. The annual procession at Kandy, in which the casket is carried out with elephants, dancers and drummers, is the largest Buddhist festival on the island.
Beside the monastic religion runs a body of practice concerned with immediate trouble: deity shrines within Buddhist temples, vows made at Kataragama, and the healing rites Bruce Kapferer studied, in which demons are addressed, made to appear, and then dismissed by ridicule. Rita Langer's work on death and rebirth rites shows the same double structure at a funeral. Both belong to one religious world.