Country

Sri Lanka

Also Known As Sri Lankan

Asia

Sri Lanka preserves one of the oldest continuous Theravada Buddhist traditions, brought from India in the third century BCE and maintained since at sites including Anuradhapura, home to a tree said to be grown from a cutting of the original tree under which the Buddha attained enlightenment. Buddhism is practiced by the Sinhala majority, while the Tamil minority is predominantly Hindu, with smaller Muslim and Christian communities also present, and the decades long civil war between the government and Tamil separatists carried a religious as well as ethnic dimension that the atlas notes rather than resolves. Kandy's Temple of the Tooth houses a relic venerated as the Buddha's tooth and remains a major pilgrimage site. Postwar tensions between Buddhist nationalist movements and the island's Muslim and Christian minorities are ongoing and documented by independent human rights reporting.

Facts

Law and State

Establishment Status

Established 3

Article 9 of the 1978 constitution gives Buddhism the foremost place among religions while pledging to protect the rights of other faiths, a Buddhist establishment clause alongside a formal commitment to religious freedom.

State Funding Mechanismthe subject's own account

Sri Lanka funds Buddhist institutions directly through the Ministry of Buddha Sasana, Religious and Cultural Affairs, a cabinet ministry responsible for the welfare of the Buddhist clergy, the upkeep of temples and Buddhist pilgrimage sites, and the statutory Buddhasasana Fund created under Act No. 35 of 1990, drawing on state allocation alongside donations; other faiths have raised concerns that state disaster relief has favored Buddhist sites over their own. 4

Apostasy or Blasphemy Law

Sri Lanka's Penal Code Ordinance contains no offense named blasphemy but reaches the same conduct in broader terms. Section 291A punishes uttering words, making sounds or gestures, or placing an object with the deliberate intention of wounding any person's religious feelings, carrying up to one year's imprisonment, a fine, or both. Section 291B punishes deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage the religious feelings of a class of persons, by spoken or written words or visible representations, carrying up to two years' imprisonment, a fine, or both. Sri Lanka has no apostasy statute. In practice the sections have most often been used against Buddhist monks and Sinhala Buddhist nationalist complainants targeting minority faiths, Muslim and Christian preachers, and atheists and secular commentators, a use human rights monitors including USCIRF describe as inverting the provisions' stated purpose of protecting minority religious feeling. 5

Registration or Recognition Regime

Article 9 of the constitution gives Buddhism the foremost place and makes it the state's duty to protect the Buddha Sasana, while Article 10 guarantees freedom of thought, conscience and religion to everyone and Article 14(1)(e) guarantees the freedom to practice one's religion; the Supreme Court has treated Article 10 as an unqualified right even alongside Buddhism's named priority. Since a 2008 ministerial circular, upheld by the Supreme Court in 2017 and updated in 2022, every religious group, regardless of faith, must obtain permission from the Ministry of Buddhasasana, Religious and Cultural Affairs to register and construct a new place of worship, showing a land deed, local government approval, at least one trustee and a sufficient resident population nearby. Civil society groups have argued the requirement has no basis in ordinary legislation and falls hardest on minority congregations. 3

Ban or Official Watchlist

Sri Lanka's constitution accords Buddhism the "foremost place" among the country's faiths and requires the government to protect it, and a 2003 Supreme Court ruling held that the state is constitutionally required to protect only Buddhism, so other religions carry no equivalent state protection. In 2017 the Supreme Court went further, ruling that no right to propagate one's own religion is protected by the constitution at all, a decision minority religious communities say leaves ordinary evangelism and outreach with no constitutional shelter regardless of whether it is coercive. 3

Concordat Basis

Sri Lanka has no concordat with the Holy See; its constitutional relationship to religion is with Buddhism instead. Article 9 of the 1978 Constitution gives Buddhism the foremost place and makes it the state's duty to protect and foster the Buddha Sasana, the teaching and monastic order, while Articles 10 and 14(1)(e) assure freedom of thought, conscience and religion to everyone regardless of faith. 6

Demographics

Religious Composition

About 70% Theravada Buddhist (Sinhalese majority), roughly 12% Hindu (chiefly Tamil), and Muslim and Christian minorities each near 7-10% (Pew Research Center, Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020). 1

Geography

Latitude

7.9 degrees north 2

Approximate reference point, rounded to one decimal place; a country's extent has no single center, so this coordinate is conventional, not a survey measurement.

Longitude

80.8 degrees east 2

Approximate reference point, rounded to one decimal place; a country's extent has no single center, so this coordinate is conventional, not a survey measurement.

Government type (class)

Presidential republic 2

Government

Capital

Colombo (commercial capital); Sri Jayewardenepura Kotte (legislative capital) 2

Government Type

presidential republic 2

Sovereignty Status

Sovereign UN member state 2

Established Year

1948 2

4 February 1948 (from the UK)

Status

Legal Status

Constitution (1978), Article 9, gives Buddhism the foremost place among religions while pledging to protect the rights of other faiths; the state remains formally committed to religious freedom alongside this Buddhist establishment clause. 3

Classification

State Funding of Religion

Official State Religion 7

Location

Learn More

Religion and History in Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka is majority Theravada Buddhist, at roughly 70 percent per Pew Research's Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020, concentrated among the Sinhalese ethnic majority, alongside a Hindu minority of about 12 percent found chiefly among Tamil communities in the north and east, and Muslim and Christian minorities each near 7 to 10 percent.

Buddhism arrived from India in the third century BCE, traditionally dated to the mission of Mahinda, son of the emperor Ashoka, and the island has preserved one of the longest continuous Theravada lineages anywhere, centered on the Sacred Tooth Relic of the Buddha housed at the Temple of the Tooth in Kandy. Hindu presence reflects both ancient Tamil settlement and colonial-era indentured labor migration under British rule; the Jaffna peninsula and eastern coast remain centers of Sri Lankan Tamil Hindu and Christian life.

Portuguese, Dutch and British colonial rule from the sixteenth through twentieth centuries introduced Catholic and Protestant Christianity while also disrupting Buddhist and Hindu institutions, provoking a nineteenth-century Buddhist revivalist movement associated with figures such as Anagarika Dharmapala that fused religious identity closely with Sinhalese nationalism.

Religion and the Sri Lankan Civil War

Sri Lanka's civil war, fought from 1983 to 2009 between the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, was primarily an ethnic and linguistic conflict over Tamil autonomy rather than a religious one in origin, since most Tamil separatists were Hindu or Christian and most government forces Sinhalese Buddhist, but religion became entangled with the conflict as Buddhist nationalist rhetoric increasingly framed Sri Lanka as a Sinhalese Buddhist nation requiring protection, a position given constitutional expression in Article 9 of the 1978 constitution, which gives Buddhism the foremost place among religions while pledging to protect the rights of other faiths.

The war caused significant destruction to religious sites on both sides, including a 1998 Tamil Tiger bombing of the Temple of the Tooth in Kandy, Buddhism's most sacred shrine on the island, and the displacement of Hindu and Christian populations from contested areas in the north and east. Since the war's end, Buddhist nationalist organizations such as the Bodu Bala Sena have periodically directed communal violence against the country's Muslim minority, notably following the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings carried out by a local Islamist group against churches and hotels, which killed over 250 people and prompted a wave of retaliatory anti-Muslim sentiment.

Connections

Associated With

A Celebration of Demons: Exorcism and the Aesthetics of Healing in Sri Lanka

This source names Sri Lanka directly: "Sinhalese exorcism practitioners in Sri Lanka, and its authority rests on that direct ethnographic method rather than on textual or doctrinal sources."

Source A Celebration of Demons: Exorcism and the Aesthetics of Healing in Sri LankaBruce Kapferer

Black July (1983)

Took place chiefly in Colombo and other Sri Lankan cities.

Source Sri Lanka: Ethnic Fratricide and the Dismantling of DemocracyStanley J. Tambiah

Buddhism

About 70% Theravada Buddhist, chiefly among the Sinhalese majority.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center

Buddhist Theosophical Society

This source names Sri Lanka directly: "founded in Colombo, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), in 1880 by Henry Steel Olcott, co-founder of the Theosophical Society, together with Helena Blavatsky and the Buddhist monk Hikkaduwe Sri Sumangala."

Source Buddhist Publication Society, Wheel Publication No. 281, "Colonel Olcott: His Service to Buddhism"B. P. Kirthisinghe and M. P. Amarasuriya

Dance and the Nation: Performance, Ritual, and Politics in Sri Lanka

This source names Sri Lanka directly: "study, built on extended fieldwork in Sri Lanka, of Kandyan dance, its roots in the Kohomba Kankariya village healing ritual, and its adoption after independence as a state symbol of Sinhala..."

Source Dance and the Nation: Performance, Ritual, and Politics in Sri LankaSusan A. Reed

Demographics of Sri Lanka

This source names Sri Lanka directly: "article on the demographics of Sri Lanka, presenting a table sourced to the Department of Census and Statistics showing 14,272,056 people, 70.10 percent of the population, recorded as Buddhist in..."

Source Demographics of Sri Lanka

Henry Steel Olcott

This source names Sri Lanka directly: "formally converting to Buddhism in Sri Lanka in 1880 and campaigning for Buddhist rights under British colonial rule."

Source The Theosophical EnlightenmentJoscelyn Godwin

Henry Steel Olcott (Wikipedia)

This source names Sri Lanka directly: "Buddhist Catechism (still in use in Sri Lanka today), and the Buddhist schools the Theosophical Society founded under his organizing across the 1880s (Ananda College 1886, Dharmaraja College 1887..."

Source Henry Steel Olcott (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

Hinduism

About 12% Hindu, chiefly among the Tamil minority.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center

Mulleriyawa Wimalatissa Child Sexual Abuse Conviction

This source names Sri Lanka directly: "Temple in Thalakolawawa, Hurigaswewa, Sri Lanka, for the sexual abuse of a fourteen-year-old boy on the night of 10 May 2022, the boy's first night at the temple after being brought there by another..."

Source Asian Mirror: Monk Jailed 30 Years for Sexually Abusing 14-Year-Old Boy at Temple

Precept and Practice: Traditional Buddhism in the Rural Highlands of Ceylon

This source names Sri Lanka directly: "study of Sinhalese Buddhism in rural Sri Lanka, written by one of the most respected living scholars of Theravada Buddhism combining close command of Pali canonical texts with direct fieldwork among..."

Source Precept and Practice: Traditional Buddhism in the Rural Highlands of CeylonRichard Gombrich

Sanghamitta

This source names Sri Lanka directly: "Sanghamitta was, by the account of the Sri Lankan Pali chronicles, a daughter of the Mauryan emperor Ashoka and a bhikkhuni who led the mission that brought Buddhism's ordained women's lineage to..."

Source The Mahavamsa, or the Great Chronicle of CeylonWilhelm Geiger (trans.)

Sinhala and Tamil

Its own cited description places these deities among devotees in Sri Lanka and southern India.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Sri Dalada Maligawa (institutional record)

This source names Sri Lanka directly: "Tooth Relic of the Buddha in Kandy, Sri Lanka."

Source Sri Dalada Maligawa (institutional record)the holders' own account

Sri Dalada Maligawa, The Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic (official site)

This source names Sri Lanka directly: "of the Sacred Tooth Relic in Kandy, Sri Lanka, the temple's own account of the relic's traditional fourth century arrival, its historic role as a royal palladium of Sinhalese kingship, and its..."

Source Sri Dalada Maligawa, The Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic (official site)Sri Dalada Maligawathe holders' own account

Sri Lanka Buddhist Monastic Abuse Complaint Data, 2023 to 2026

The 2019 Sri Lanka Easter Sunday Bombings

Fought in Colombo, Negombo and Batticaloa, Sri Lanka.

Source Final Report of the Presidential Commission of Inquiry on the Easter Sunday AttacksPresidential Commission of Inquiry on the Easter Attacks, Government of Sri Lanka

The Kandyan Dance of the Esala Perahera

This source names Sri Lanka directly: "annual ten-night procession in Kandy, Sri Lanka that parades a symbolic casket representing the relic of the Buddha's tooth, housed at the city's Temple of the Tooth."

Source The Buddha's Tooth: Western Tales of a Sri Lankan RelicJohn S. Strong

The Pali Canon (Tipitaka)

This source names Sri Lanka directly: "places its commitment to writing in Sri Lanka in the first century BCE, a date this atlas has not independently established rather than treated as settled fact."

Source The Pali Canon (Tipitaka)Anonymous (Theravada tradition)

The Temple of the Emerald Buddha (World History Encyclopedia)

This source names Sri Lanka directly: "legendary journey through India, Sri Lanka, Cambodia and the northern Thai kingdoms, its 1434 discovery at Chiang Rai and its installation in its purpose built Bangkok temple in 1784 under Rama I."

Source The Temple of the Emerald Buddha (World History Encyclopedia)Kim Martins

The Veddas

This source names Sri Lanka directly: "survey of Vedda communities in Sri Lanka, drawn from fieldwork in 1907 and 1908, describing Ne Yaku, named ancestral spirits, and Kande Yaka, a mountain deity."

Source The VeddasC. G. Seligmann and Brenda Z. Seligmann

Theravada

This source names Sri Lanka directly: "million), Myanmar (about 38 million), Sri Lanka (about 13 million) and Cambodia (about 12 million), and that Theravadins accept as authoritative the Pali canon and trace their lineage to the Elders..."

Source Theravada

Uduwila Sujatha Child Sexual Abuse Conviction

This source names Sri Lanka directly: "boy who was living at his temple in Sri Lanka, an offence dated to 2009."

Source Newswire.lk: Monk to Serve 10 Years as Court Dismisses Appeal Against Conviction

Vedda

Its own cited description places the Vedda in Sri Lanka.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Contains

Adam Peak (Sri Pada)

Source Divinity Atlas Entity Records, First Edition

Anuradhapura (Sri Maha Bodhi)

Source Divinity Atlas Entity Records, First Edition

Mahavihara

The monastery stood at Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka.

Source The Mahavamsa, or the Great Chronicle of CeylonWilhelm Geiger (trans.)

Sri Dalada Maligawa

Source Divinity Atlas Entity Records, First Edition

Temple of the Tooth (Sri Dalada Maligawa)

Source Divinity Atlas Entity Records, First Edition

Originated Here

Amarapura Nikaya

Source Amarapura Nikaya (Wikipedia)

Ananda Coomaraswamy

Born in Colombo to a Tamil father and an English mother.

Source Coomaraswamy: His Life and WorkRoger Lipsey

Ramanna Nikaya

Source Ramanna Nikaya (Wikipedia)

Siam Nikaya

Source Wikipedia, "Siam Nikaya"

Sinhalese

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors

Tamils

Northern and eastern Sri Lanka hold long-established Tamil communities.

Spread Events Here

1915 Sinhalese Muslim Riots

Black July (1983)

Buddhism Reaches Sri Lanka

Mihintale and Anuradhapura, in Sri Lanka.

Source History of Indian Buddhism: From the Origins to the Saka EraEtienne Lamotte, translated by Sara Webb-Boin

Olcott and Dharmapala Revive Buddhism in Sri Lanka Under Colonial Rule

Colombo and Galle, Sri Lanka; the same place entity Ashoka's third-century-BCE mission there already anchors to.

Source Henry Steel Olcott (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

The 2019 Sri Lanka Easter Sunday Bombings

The Sri Lankan Civil War (1983 to 2009)

Sources

1. Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020

Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 2025View the Source

2. The World Factbook (Central Intelligence Agency)

Central Intelligence Agency, Central Intelligence AgencyGovernment, government type: Sri LankaView the Source

3. International Religious Freedom Report

United States Department of State, Office of International Religious Freedom, US Department of State, 2023View the Source

4. Ministry of Buddha Sasana, Religious and Cultural Affairs (Wikipedia)

Wikipedia contributors, Wikimedia FoundationView the Source

5. Sri Lanka Law: Penal Code Ordinance (Consolidated Text)

srilankalaw.lkView the Source

6. The Constitution of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka (Parliament of Sri Lanka, Official Text)

Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, Parliament of Sri LankaView the Source

7. Religion in Sri Lanka (Wikipedia)

Lead

Quote, Lead

Buddhism is declared as the state religion of Sri Lanka and receives special privileges in the Sri Lankan constitution, such as mandatory protection and nationwide propagation by the government.

View the Source

The Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd edition

Oxford University Press, Oxford University Pressdemonym / adjectival formView the Source

Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)

Encyclopaedia Britannica editors, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 2024Originated Here: SinhaleseView the Source

Wikipedia, "Siam Nikaya"

Originated Here: Siam Nikaya, Lead

Quote, Originated Here: Siam Nikaya, Lead

is a monastic order within Sri Lankan Buddhism

View the Source

Amarapura Nikaya (Wikipedia)

Originated Here: Amarapura Nikaya, Lead

Quote, Originated Here: Amarapura Nikaya, Lead

was a Sri Lankan monastic fraternity

View the Source

Ramanna Nikaya (Wikipedia)

Originated Here: Ramanna Nikaya, Lead

Quote, Originated Here: Ramanna Nikaya, Lead

was one of the three major Buddhist orders in Sri Lanka

View the Source

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