1. Among the founders of the Ceylon Studies Seminar, which began at Peradeniya in late 1968, was the then recently appointed professor of sociology, Gananath Obeyesekere. It was on the new premises of his department that the participants used to meet. He was also one of the earliest to provide papers to be discussed at those meetings. His first contribution, stemming from his long-term interest in the Pattini cult, was on an historical topic, “Gajabahu and the Gajabahu Synchronism” (Obeyesekere 1970). I happened to follow soon afterwards with a paper on “Millennialism in Relation to Buddhism” (Malalgoda 1970). My presence at Peradeniya owed something very directly to Gananath Obeyesekere. It was he who recruited me to teach in the sociology department (where, some seven years earlier, he himself had given me my first lessons in that subject). In paying tribute to him now, I am reminded naturally of that happy and stimulating academic year 1968-69, when I saw him almost daily and got to know him well. It is appropriate, therefore, that an essay completed in that year provides the starting point for the present contribution.

One of the unusual items cited in that essay of mine was a brief text called Sumana Sūtraya, unpublished but available in manuscript at the libraries of both the Colombo Museum and the British Museum (Malalgoda 1970: 438-439).