Religion in Sri Lanka

Religion in Sri Lanka means, first and foremost, Theravada Buddhism, the oldest surviving school of the faith, which the island has guarded for more than two thousand years. Around 70% of Sri Lankans are Buddhist, and the constitution gives Buddhism “the foremost place” while still assuring freedom of belief to all. Yet this is a genuinely plural island: Hindus, Muslims and Christians together make up nearly a third of the people, and their temples, mosques and churches stand within sight of one another across much of the country. Faith here is not a private matter tucked away for one day a week. It is woven visibly through the calendar, the landscape and daily life.

A Buddhist island

Buddhism reached Sri Lanka in the 3rd century BCE, when the monk Mahinda, son of the Indian emperor Ashoka, is said to have converted King Devanampiya Tissa at Mihintale. It has been central to Sinhalese identity ever since. The island became the great stronghold of the Theravada tradition, and it was here, at Aluvihara near Matale, that the Buddha’s teachings were first written down in the Pali Canon in the 1st century BCE, having been preserved by memory until then. To understand this thread, our page on the arrival of Buddhism traces the story in full.

That long inheritance is why the constitution grants Buddhism its special place, and why the monthly full-moon day, Poya, is a national holiday when alcohol is not sold and the temples fill with white-clad devotees. It also explains the extraordinary density of sacred architecture: the giant dagobas (stupas) of the ancient capitals, the cave temples, and the reclining and seated Buddhas carved from living rock. Faith and history are inseparable here, and much of what a visitor comes to see was built to the glory of the Buddha.

The Sacred Tooth Relic

No object is more revered than the Sacred Tooth Relic, a tooth believed to be the Buddha’s own, enshrined in the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic, the Sri Dalada Maligawa, in Kandy. Tradition says the relic was smuggled to the island in the 4th century CE, hidden in the hair of a princess, and it soon became far more than a religious treasure. For centuries it was a symbol of sovereignty itself: whoever held the tooth was held to hold the right to rule the land, and Sri Lanka’s kings moved their capital, and eventually their whole court, to be near it.

The relic is never shown openly. Pilgrims and visitors instead file past the inner chamber during the daily pujas, when drumming and horns announce the ritual and the golden casket that holds it can be glimpsed. Once a year, in July or August, the tooth’s power is displayed to the city in the Esala Perahera, one of Asia’s greatest processions, a nightly parade of torchbearers, whip-crackers, Kandyan dancers, drummers and scores of elephants caparisoned in glittering cloth. It is among the most spectacular religious events on earth, and reason enough to time a visit around it.

Adam’s Peak: a shared summit

Few places capture Sri Lanka’s layered faith better than Adam’s Peak, or Sri Pada, the “sacred footprint.” At its summit is a footprint-shaped hollow in the rock that four religions claim as their own. To Buddhists it is the print of the Buddha; to Hindus, that of the god Shiva; to Muslims, the mark of Adam, cast out of Eden; and to some Christians, the footprint of St Thomas. Through the pilgrimage season, from December to April, tens of thousands climb the thousands of steps by night, Buddhist and Hindu, Muslim and Christian, side by side, to reach the top for sunrise, when the peak throws a perfect triangular shadow across the clouds below. It is one of the very few holy places on the planet genuinely shared by so many faiths.

The ancient Bo tree

At Anuradhapura, in the island’s ancient heartland, stands the Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi, a sacred fig grown from a cutting of the very tree at Bodh Gaya in India under which the Buddha is said to have reached enlightenment. The cutting was carried to Sri Lanka by the nun Sanghamitta, daughter of Emperor Ashoka, and planted here around 288 BCE. That makes it, by its recorded history, the oldest living human-planted tree anywhere in the world. Propped on golden supports and ringed by a gilded railing, it is tended without a single break in a chain of guardianship stretching back more than two thousand years, and pilgrims come from across the country to make offerings beneath it.

Hindus, Muslims and Christians

Sri Lanka’s minority faiths are woven deep into the island’s fabric. Hinduism, the religion of most Tamils, is concentrated in the north and east and among the tea-country communities of the hills. Its colourful kovils, their towers, or gopurams, crowded with painted deities, are a striking sight, none grander than the Nallur Kandaswamy Kovil in Jaffna. Islam, brought by Arab traders more than a thousand years ago, is the faith of the Sri Lankan Moors and of the Malays, felt strongly in the port towns and the east-coast trading centres. Christianity, largely Roman Catholic and a legacy of Portuguese and Dutch rule, is strong along the western coast around Negombo, so busy with churches it is nicknamed “Little Rome”, and among some Tamil communities. The southern shrine of Kataragama is a remarkable meeting point of them all, sacred at once to Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims and the indigenous Vedda people.

Religion is not a museum piece in Sri Lanka but a living, everyday presence, and travelling with an eye to it deepens everything else you see. To understand how it fits the wider culture, read our page on the Sri Lankan people and their traditions.