It was one of the works written in India and published in Russia, a research on the folk story about goddess Pattini, and specific forms of her veneration. Classifying the ‘official’ religion of Ceylon, the author declared that the Sinhalese kept Hinayana Buddhism, and it shaped their life and worldview, in general. But common people preserved some relics of ideas on gods and spirits which had existed there before Buddhism. The research shows the forms of such beliefs, and the reasons of their resistance — mainly, there were beliefs in gods-protectors or dangerous spirits. An important element of outer influences was Hinduism brought from the mainland by conquerors, and disseminated often through mixed marriages. The Hindu pantheon was open for interactions with the local Animism of the Sinhalese, and local gods were fast included into it. Thus, according M., the Sinhalese united Buddhist, Animistic, and Hindu concepts. That is why the choice of the object for her research was not an occasional one; the author saw that triple syncretism in the topic.
M. interpreted the story about Pattini — goddess of epidemic diseases in the various forms of her cult; first of all, there were religious games in the honour of the goddess during the epidemics; they included the opposition of Pattini and her husband. Studying different variations of those games and performances on the base of the data gathered by M. herself, and comparing them with the information of other scholars, the author analyzed the historical context, in which the Hindu cult of Pattini could be transferred to Ceylon. The image of Pattini is known also in the folklore, fairy tales, and folk books. Studying those sources and comparing them with the oral narrations on the same goddess fixed by M. herself, she noted that it was the oral tradition which had given Pattini some supernatural forces. It happened under the Buddhist influence, when they described in later narrations how the goddess would come in the future as Buddha. The author came to the conclusion that the story about Pattini was at the moment in the process of its accepting into the Buddhist doctrine of the Sinhalese.
The research by M. started Russian studies of some less known beliefs of peoples of the South Asia; it demonstrated peculiarities of folk religion, and also built the basement for the further research work, setting important questions on the ways of accepting cults, interactions of religions in historical contexts, and the transformation of deeply enrooted folk beliefs, mainly animisctic ones, into some new forms shaped with cultural and historical milieu.