Piyadassi Maha Thera  is best known as a great preacher of the Dhamma both in Sinhala and in English and it was in this field that his popularity was foremost. He was born on 8 July 1914 at Kotahena in Colombo, Sri Lanka and was educated at Nalanda College, Colombo, thereafter at the University of Sri Lanka and the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard University as a research student.