This 2,500-year-old relic makes a Western heart skip a beat
The Temple of the Tooth
I’m not a Buddhist, but as soon as I heard about the Sacred Tooth, I knew I had to see it.
Story and photos by Laurie McAndish King
High above the clouds in the forested mountains of Sri Lanka sits the city of Kandy, once the capital of an ancient kingdom and now home to one incalculably precious treasure: the Sacred Tooth Relic of the Guatama Buddha.
I’m not a Buddhist, but as soon as I heard about the Sacred Tooth Relic, I knew I had to see it.
According to legend, mourners rescued this tooth from the remains of the funeral pyre on which the Buddha was cremated nearly 2,500 years ago. The legend doesn’t specify which tooth it was — canine or molar, upper or lower — but I like to think it was a wisdom tooth. That fabled relic now rests in a golden casket, which is kept closely guarded in the eponymous Temple of the Tooth, situated at the edge of a small, serene lake in the center of the city of Kandy. The tooth attracts more than a million pilgrims each year, who come to pay their respects to the founder of one of the world’s great religions. What was it like, I wondered, to make a pilgrimage to a tooth?
I had a chance to find out for myself during a visit to Sri Lanka, the teardrop-shaped island that floats off India’s southeastern shore. Arab traders called the island Serendip, from which the eighteenth-century novelist Horace Walpole coined the word “serendipity” for his retelling of the fairy tale, The Three Princes of Serendip. Andrew Carnegie swore there was “no prettier sea-shore in the world” and Mark Twain said simply, “Dear me, it is beautiful!” Sri Lanka is renowned for excellent spices and tea, diamonds, rubies and other precious stones. It is said that King Solomon, who could have sent his emissaries practically anywhere in search of gems befitting the Queen of Sheba, sent them to Sri Lanka.
My hotel was located in the capital city of Colombo, more than seventy winding, mountainous miles from Kandy and the Temple of the Tooth. The concierge arranged for a local man, Shantha, to act as my driver and guide. Exceptionally handsome and six feet tall — big for a Sri Lankan — Shantha was impeccably clothed in a neat white polo shirt, dark pants, and shiny black dress shoes. His English was excellent, and he told me many stories about his country as we drove past lush tea plantations and rushing waterfalls — including tales about the fabled tooth.
“According to legend,” Shantha explained, “whoever possessed the Tooth Relic was destined to rule Sri Lanka.”
“Hmmm. That must have created a lot of conflict,” I suggested, imagining interminable battles with legions of soldiers capturing, losing and recapturing the tiny treasure.
“Yes, my country’s been in conflict for centuries,” Shantha confirmed. “Our war just ended a few years ago.”
“So, you grew up with it.”
“It’s all I ever knew.”
“The people here seem quite gentle and kind,” I observed. “That’s surprising, given the constant conflict.”
“Seventy percent of Sri Lanka is Buddhist,” Shantha replied, as though that explained everything. “About fifteen percent are Hindu and the rest are mostly Muslim and Christian.” Shantha, a devout Buddhist, kept a small blue devotional book with him in the car and was happy to answer my questions about the religious practices of Sri Lankan Buddhists.
“Buddhism has five main precepts — rules we follow to lead better lives. We must refrain from killing, stealing and sexual misconduct, and from lying and intoxication. Some Buddhists practice a stricter version and adhere to additional precepts, such as abstaining from luxuries, entertainment and decoration. But it is up to each individual to decide what is best.”
On the way to Kandy, Shantha continued his commentary and I was charmed by the peaceable image that emerged. Every full moon day is a holiday in Sri Lanka. Astrology plays an important role in determining auspicious days for weddings. The national sport is volleyball.
Most people use three-wheeled tuk-tuks to get around, and we shared the road with quite a few. Nearly all were embellished with bumper stickers expressing the driver’s spiritual, philosophical, or political affinities:
Peace Begins with Smile
A good driver is a better lover
Tea Drinkers are Better Thinkers
and, oddly,
Che Guevara!
We dodged dogs and wound our way around cattle in the road. I watched Shantha stop to wait for a break in oncoming traffic so he could move into the other lane to avoid running over a large lizard that lay basking on the asphalt in front of us. Shantha grew visibly excited as we neared our destination, leaning forward as he drove, his voice pitched a little bit higher. He had taken hundreds of travelers to see the Temple of the Tooth, but it was still a significant trip.
We arrived at Kandy in the early afternoon. Surrounded by dense forests, lakes, rivers, and cascading waterfalls, the area is well protected from invaders and has a long history of political independence — it held off Portuguese, Dutch and British colonizers for three hundred years, until the early 1800s. Shrines sacred to the Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, and Muslim faiths have nestled in nearby hillsides for centuries.
We would visit the Temple of the Tooth the next morning, when it was least crowded. In the meantime we enjoyed window-shopping in Kandy, home to a flourishing community of artisans.
Woodcarving is an especially important industry, and decorative boxes, walking sticks, toys, and souvenirs were on offer at shop after shop. My favorite motif was the fanciful makara, a mythical sea creature with the trunk of an elephant, the ears of a pig, the body of a fish, and — so the locals say — the aggressive behavior of a crocodile.
The ancient Kingdom of Kandy, I learned, had been an orderly domain, maintained by particularly persuasive deterrents described by a British adventurer named Robert Knox, who was detained as a “guest” of the King of Kandy in 1660 after one of Knox’s companions inadvertently angered the ruler. Knox spent nearly twenty years in Kandy in a loose sort of captivity, and wrote extensively about what he saw. His descriptions of life there are said to have inspired parts of Daniel Defoe’s novel, Robinson Crusoe.
The red-roofed Royal Bath House, constructed for courtly concubines, sits on the lake in front of the golden-topped Temple of the Tooth pavilion. Both were once part of a large palace complex.
Just up the street from the bathhouse sits an old theater, spacious and creaky, in which a troupe of performers dance and drum each evening in the traditional Kandyan style. Their costumes are dazzling: voluminous white sarongs, wide red waistbands, and elaborately beaded red-and-gold breastplates, topped off with spectacular turbans or gold-ornamented crowns. The barefooted dancers were athletic and exuberant, but it is the drumming that was most memorable.
The three-hour performance is a masterpiece of virtuoso percussion, a persistent pulse of pounding sound, an acoustic onslaught. Riffs rose and fell, drummers slid into complex counterpoint, rhythms ebbed and flowed in what seemed like telepathic coordination. All of it still thrummed in my head when I returned to the hotel after midnight and dozed fitfully, dreaming of elephant tusks and wisdom teeth.
It is impossible to sleep late in Kandy. A Muslim call to prayer — chanting over a loudspeaker — begins at five o’clock each morning and lasts nearly an hour. Traffic commences around six, and what sounded like a thousand dogs started barking at sunrise, shortly before seven. The local birds began their cacophonous chorus a few minutes later, and at seven o’clock sharp a gong clanged three times.
After a breakfast of rice and fish curry, Shantha and I joined a throng of people moving slowly toward the Temple of the Tooth, participating in the puja that occurs three times a day, every day of the year. More than a thousand people waited with us in a long, quiet line — calmly, patiently, graciously — anticipating a glimpse of the Sacred Tooth Relic.
We crossed a bridge over a wide water-filled moat, passed through formidable fortress walls and into elaborate pavilions decorated with sacred texts, and intricate ivory carvings of fanciful animals: dogs with wings, lions with human-like arms and legs. We squeezed into a narrow corridor steeped in the sweet, heady fragrances of jasmine and frangipani. In a two-story chamber, ornate panels — crowded with golden gods and goddesses, writhing green dragons, and crocodiles in roiling blue seas — stretched to the ceiling. Drums beat maniacally and incense clouded the room.
Snaking past a set of glittering doors flanked by four magnificent six-foot elephant tusks resplendent in golden standards, we found ourselves deep inside the chambers that housed the golden, crown-like reliquary we had all come to see.
I’m still not sure exactly how it was that Shantha got me to the front of the crowded hall. Tall and regal in bearing, but without a trace of arrogance, he simply walked through the throng, up a staircase and across a teeming hall to the front of the viewing area. The crowds opened up and made way for him as though he were some sort of prince. I watched our wake closely and noticed that no one looked the least bit perturbed about moving aside for us; it was almost as though we were one huge organism, our common protoplasm matter-of-factly rearranging itself as Shantha and I moved to the front of the room.
No one among the thousand or more visitors would be allowed more than a glance, but Shantha showed me exactly where to stand for the best view when the interior temple doors finally yawned open. I would not see the actual tooth; only the first reliquary, or casket, which remained closed. Inside it sat another, and inside that sat more — a total of seven ornate boxes nested inside one another like Russian matryoshka dolls. The last one held the Buddha’s tooth, far too precious to be displayed to the public three times a day.
We waited. Suddenly the doors began to move and an irresistible press of bodies welled up. They carried me past the reliquary in a second, but my quick glimpse was unforgettable: It stood as tall as a person and was shaped like a pope’s hat — does that design have significance across religions? — with an elaborate finial at the top that pointed to the heavens like some kind of sparkling space needle. Rimmed with golden bands, encrusted with golden medallions, dripping with ropes of shimmering pearls, it was the most magnificent creation I had ever seen. A luminous glow rippled from it, and my heart caught for a moment, thrilled. I actually thought I might be having some sort of unfortunate cardiac event, but my pulse returned to normal as I was enveloped in the sweet-scented altar flowers, the hypnotic drumming and swirling incense, the elaborate decoration and vivid colors, and the press of a thousand pilgrims. Now all of our hearts seemed to beat as one.
And so my first lesson in Buddhism came to a close—and it seemed subtly serendipitous. I had come to see a sacred relic, but ended up experiencing something far more precious.
The reliquary that holds the Sacred Tooth Relic of the Guatama Buddha, dazzling as it is, cannot compare with the memory of one thousand Buddhist hearts beating in unison—and my own very excited Western heart beating right along with them.
“The Temple of the Tooth” was first published in Your Crocodile has Arrived: More True Stories from a Curious Traveler — a collection of stories celebrating the world’s oddities and ephemera. The book won a first place Independent Press Award, and is available from Book Passage in Corte Madera, CA; from other independent bookstores at IndieBound; and online.
