Literally “Way of the Elders,” today the term designates the form of Buddhism dominant in Sri Lanka and large parts of Southeast Asia. However, the term only started to be widely used as a self-designation in the twentieth century. The school on which today’s Theravāda is likely based is a remnant of the Sthaviranikāya, which was one of the many early mainstream Buddhist schools in India that formed in the first centuries after the Buddha’s death. According to the tradition Sthaviranikāya came to Sri Lanka in the third century ʙᴄᴇ. The Theravāda tradition takes the Pali canon as its foundational scripture and maintains that it is the authoritative record of the historical Buddha’s teachings.