Sinhalese Folklore Notes, Ceylon

A descriptive survey of Sinhalese popular belief, ritual practice, and oral tradition organized into sections on cosmology, the natural and animal worlds, human life, spirit beings, omens, magic, illness and healing, and social customs. It then examines rites of passage, occupations, festivals, games, and recreational forms, and concludes with collected stories, songs, proverbs, riddles, and a glossary of folk terms. Material assembled from earlier articles and arranged using a folklore classification, the account combines local explanations of landscape and marvels with accounts of ritual performance and sampled verbal traditions for reference and further study.