The History of the Buddha's Relic Shrine

In this book Stephen Berkwitz offers the first complete English translation of the Buddhist chronicle called the Sinhala Thupavamsa, composed by Parakam Pandita in thirteenth-century Sri Lanka. One of the first Buddhist histories of its kind to be written in the language of Sinhala, this work represents a substantially longer and embellished version of an older Pali language work called the Thumpavamsa. Unlike the Pali sources that were composed by elites for learned audiences throughout the Buddhist world, this text is an important example of the large number of Buddhist histories written in local languages for popular consumption.