The present publication is a revised version of a dissertation approved for an M.A. degree in Sociology at the University of Colombo in 2000. There is an appealing modesty to this study, especially striking, in the contemporary cultural situation where coffee table books are disguised as serious scholarship and book reviews are uncritically adulatory. This is a study of a major Sinhala ritual, namely, the planetary or Bali ritual, performed in and around Bentota in Southern Sri Lanka. The study examines the nature of a practical form of deity propitiation among Sinhala Buddhists.