Buddha Puja ‘Homage to the Buddha’ is a religious practice found in every Buddhist temple and many a Buddhist household around the world. Over the last two millennia or more, it has taken many a shape and turn. This treatment, however, relates to the Buddha Puja in the particular cultural context of Sinhala Buddhism, writing it as a single word, Buddhapujava (with a -vadenoting the Sinhalizing suffix) to distinguish it from the ritual in other cultural contexts. It is as practiced in Sri Lanka, ironically, not in Sinhala but in Pali, Buddhism being introduced in the 3rd c. BCE by Arhant Mahinda during the reign of Devanampiya Tissa in the Anuradhapura period. It is not the Buddhapujava itself, however, that is the topic of this paper, but its authorship. Finding no evidence of its authorship, or rigin, in India, it comes to be located in Sri Lanka. Seeking evidence for its Redactor from within the ritual itself, we are led to none other than Arhant Mahinda who introduces the Buddhadhamma to the island. It is also established how, in the very process of creating the Buddhapujava, the panca-, atthangika- and dasa-silas also come to be systematized into a coherent pattern. Two alternative dates for the possible launch of the ceremony are suggested, making it the oldest living Buddhapuja ritual in the world. In a concluding theoretical detour, a distinction is made between an Etic Buddha Puja and an Emic Buddha Puja.
