[7][8] The Buddhist monks of the Anuradhapura Maha Viharaya maintained chronicles of the island's history starting from the 3rd century BCE.
Mahānāma is described as residing in a monastery belonging to general Dighasanda and affiliated with the Mahavihara, but no other reliable biographical information is known.
[11] Mahānāma introduces the Mahavamsa with a passage that claims that he intends to correct repetitions and shortcomings that afflicted the chronicle compiled by the ancients- this may refer either to the Dipavamsa or to the Sinhala Atthakatha.
[11] A companion volume, the Culavamsa "Lesser Chronicle", compiled by Sinhala monks, covers the period from the 4th century to the British takeover of Sri Lanka in 1815.
[12] It is one of the few documents containing material relating to the Nāga and Yakkha peoples, indigenous inhabitants of Lanka before the legendary arrival of Prince Vijaya from Singha Pura of Kalinga.
If not for the Mahavamsa, the story behind the large stupas in Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka, such as Ruwanwelisaya, Jetavanaramaya, Abhayagiri vihāra and other works of ancient engineering would never have been known.
Its contents have aided in the identification and corroboration of archaeological sites and inscriptions associated with early Buddhism, the empire of Ashoka, and even the Tamil kingdoms of southern India.
It also briefly recounts the history of Buddhism in India, from the date of the Buddha's death to the 3rd Buddhist council where the Dharma was reviewed.
From the emphasis of its point-of-view, and being compiled to record the good deeds of the kings who were patrons of the Anuradhapura Maha Viharaya,[15] it has been said to support Sinhalese nationalism.
Its stories of battles and invasions, court intrigue, and great constructions of stupas and water reservoirs, written in elegant verse suitable for memorization, caught the imagination of the Buddhist world of the time.
Unlike many texts written in antiquity, it also discusses various aspects of the lives of ordinary people, and how they joined the King's army or farmed.
[21]: 148 [22] Early Western scholars like Otto Franke dismissed the possibility that the Mahavamsa contained reliable historical content, but subsequent evidence from inscriptions and archaeological finds have confirmed that there is a factual basis for many of the stories recorded in the Mahavamsa, including Ashoka's missionary work and the kings associated with founding various monasteries and stupas.
[23] Wilhelm Geiger was one of the first Western scholars to suggest that it was possible to separate useful historical information from the mythic and poetic elaborations of the chronicle.
[26] No mention of cross-cousin marriage is found in earlier Buddhist sources, and scholars suspect that this genealogy was created to fit the Buddha into conventional Sri Lankan social structures for noble families.
Hermann Oldenberg, a German scholar of Indology who has published studies on the Buddha and translated many Pali texts, considers this story a "pure invention".
[11] A subsequent work sometimes known as Culavamsa extends the Mahavamsa to cover the period from the reign of Mahasena of Anuradhapura (277–304 CE) until 1815, when the entire island was surrendered to the British throne.
Unlike the Mahavamsa itself, which is composed almost entirely of material associated with the Mahavihara, the Mahavamsa-tika makes several references to commentaries and alternate versions of the chronicle associated with the Abhayagiri vihara tradition.