The Mahavamsa is the epic tale of ancient Sri Lanka's founding and early history. It is the least known of all the world's great chronicles, and much less familiar than its Subcontinent forebears, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.
The Mahavamsa or "Great Chronicle" describes the founding era of Theravada Buddhism in Sri Lanka. Its sweeping relation of the period from 500 BC through 300 AD details the origins of virtually every religious practice and social institution in Sri Lanka and South India today. Some of these are:
-- The commonwealth that developed between ruler, religion and populace
-- Popular Buddhism's fusion with local shamantistic beliefs and practices from Brahminism, Hinduism and Tantra
-- The dilution of the caste system after removing its religious proscriptions
-- The great reservoir based irrigation system which made a complex civilization on the island possible
-- The culture which developed from the cultivator mentality of the rice paddy and moral principles of Buddhism
The Mahavamsa's literary qualities place it alongside the best of the literature emanating from Subcontinent traditions. While the palace literature of the time was sparse and stilted, and monastic literature was confined to edifying stories about the Buddha, the popular oral storytelling tradition which was the ultimate origin of the Mahavamsa was a very rich brew of fables, folk stories, hearth and fireside songs, incantations against devils, primitive theatre cast in the form of exorcisms, ancestor worship, animism, and the lore of the paddy culture. All this life and liveliness found its way into the pages of the Mahavamsa.
This edition contains the text of the Mahavamsa,plus numerous explanatory notes and commentaries that paint a broad picture of the era in which the Mahavamsa was written.