This article offers a close reading of the twelfth-century Muvadev-dā-vata, one of the earliest Sinhala-language poetic works to model itself on the Sanskrit kāvya. While earlier studies of the Muvadev-dā- vata have tended to criticize it as a flawed retelling of a Pāli-language jātaka, I argue that the poem instead represents an attempt to seriously grapple with rather serious Buddhological questions: When ought one renounce their worldly status…