POPULATION 19,576,783
BUDDHIST 69 percent
HINDU 15 percent
CHRISTIAN 8 percent
MUSLIM 7 percent
OTHER 1 percent

Country Overview

Introduction

Sri Lanka (officially known as the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, formerly known to the colonial world as Ceylon, and known by its Sinhala name, Lanka, throughout history) is the island nation found just off the southern tip of India.

By about the third century B.C.E. Buddhist laity had begun to dedicate meditation retreats for Buddhist monks. A line of kingship supportive of Buddhist monks, who would later establish the orthodox Mahavihara tradition of Theravada Buddhism, gained political hegemony by the middle of the third century B.C.E. Over the next 13 centuries the capital city of Anuradhapura developed spectacularly into a thriving cosmopolitan city and international center of learning.

By the last half of the first millennium C.E., three major monastic sects (the orthodox Theravada Mahavihara and...