Literary Exchange Between India and Sri Lanka

This chapter explores points of contact between India and Sri Lanka with respect to the exchange of religious, poetic, narrative, and philological literature. I consider the initial transmission and translation of canonical and commentarial Pali works in Sri Lanka, the development of Pali literature under the influence of Sanskrit in “the long twelfth century,” the prolific and religiously inclusive period of Sinhala literary production during the fifteenth century, concluding with reflections on avenues for future research to enhance our understanding of the influence of Tamil literature on Sinhala.