Buddhist Rituals of Death and Rebirth: Contemporary Sri Lankan Practice and Its Origins

Rita Langer's Buddhist Rituals of Death and Rebirth is a scholarly study combining textual analysis of Pali and Sanskrit death-ritual sources with contemporary ethnographic fieldwork on Sri Lankan funerary practice, tracing both the doctrinal origins of specific rites and how they are actually performed today. Its dual method, historical philology paired with lived fieldwork, is its particular strength, letting Langer show where contemporary practice follows textual prescription closely and where it has diverged or absorbed non-textual local custom. Its geographic focus is specifically Sri Lankan Theravada practice, and readers should not assume its findings generalize without qualification to Buddhist death ritual in Southeast Asian or East Asian traditions, which follow their own separate textual and ritual histories Langer's book does not attempt to cover.