Sinhala (or Sinhalese) is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by the great majority of people in Sri Lanka - about 16,000,000 people. As an Indo-Aryan language, it is more closely related to the languages of Northern India, e. g., Hindi/Urdu and Bengali, than to the Dravidian languages of neighboring South India, such as Telugu, Tamil, and Malayalam.

Sinhala is written in its own script, which consists of a basic set of 36 letters. It is similar to Hebrew in that the usual basic form of a letter stands for a consonant, with diacritical marks indicating a vowel following to form a syllable.

The Prayer Book presented here is written completely in Sinhala script, and was published and printed in Sri Lanka (then called Ceylon) in 1889. It is the third edition, the second (1831) being translated by the Revs. Samuel Lambrick (among the first Anglican missionaries in Ceylon) and James Selkirk, both of the C. M. S. The third edition was revised by Mr. Selkirk in 1839, this present text, being a moderate revision of that. It is listed in David Griffiths' Bibliography of the Book of Common Prayer as 157:7. The book contains xviii + 410 pages and measures 7.25 x 4.5".

Because this book uses Sinhala script, it is presented here as PDF images. It is presented in two parts: the services (including Collects for Sundays), and the Psalter.