The 10-day public exhibition of the sacred tooth relic which commenced on April 18 after a respite of 16 years ends today.

Revered by millions and regarded as Sri Lanka’s seal of sovereignty, the sacred tooth relic of the Buddha, since its arrival in the island, had been the insignia of the royalty, shifting to wherever the seat of the government had moved. The most sacred relic had been sheltered in the last Sinhala kingdom of Kandy for the past three centuries in the Dalada Maligawa or the Palace of the Tooth Relic. The sacred tooth relic is revered with a continuum of deeply seated rites and rituals, evolving a tradition of its own which had caught the imagination of many foreign travelers to the island as well.

BY RANDIMA ATTYGALLE

John Davy an English physician who accompanied the Governor of Ceylon, Sir Robert Brownrigg on his tour of the Central and the Uva provinces, documents in his work, ‘An Account of the interior of Ceylon and of its inhabitants with travels in that island’ (1821) his impressions of the Dalada Maligawa and the tooth relic: ‘The Dalada Maligawa, was the domestic temple of the king, and it’s the most venerated of any in the country, as it contains the relic, the tooth of Boodhoo to which the whole island was dedicated and which is considered by good Boodhists as the most precious thing in the world.’

(spelled as in the original writing) Davy who goes onto note that he had the rare opportunity enjoyed by only a few Europeans ‘of seeing the celebrated relic when it was recovered, towards the conclusion of the rebellion (of 1818) and brought back to be replaced in the Dalada Malegawa, from which it had been clandestinely taken,’ provides a detailed description of it and even provides a sketch to give some idea of its size and form. ‘Never a relic was more previously enshrined; wrapped in pure sheet-gold, it was placed in a case just large enough to receive it, of gold, covered externally with emeralds, diamonds and rubies, tastefully arranged.’ Describing the outermost of seven caskets containing the relic, Davy writes: ‘the ornaments attached to it are extremely rich and consists of gold chains and a great variety of gems, suspended from it. The most remarkable of these is a bird hanging by a gold chain and formed entirely of diamonds, rubies, blue sapphires, emeralds and cat’s-eyes, set in gold, which is hid by the profusion of stones.’

Encrusted with gems

Colonial Secretary of Ceylon, James Emerson Tennent in the Volume 2 of his book Ceylon, provides another account of the relic accompanied by a sketch of the shrine in which it is deposited. ‘The apartment in which it is deposited is in the inmost recess of the Vihara, a small chamber without windows, in which the air is stiflingly hot, and heavy with the perfume of flowers. The frames of the doors are inlaid with carved ivory and on a massive silver table stands the bell shaped carandua, the shrine which encloses the relic, encrusted with gems and festooned with jewelled chains. The outer case contains a number of others, similarly wrought, but diminishing in size, till on removing the inner one a golden lotus is disclosed, in the centre of which reposes the mysterious tooth.’

An American professor of Historical Theology, John F Hurst in his documentation, The Country and the People of India and Ceylon (New York 1891) pens a section under the banner, The Enchanted Road to Kandy. Visiting the Temple of the Tooth, Hurst is impressed by the Kandyan craftsmanship describing it to be of a ‘style well worthy of the early Italian workers.’ He goes on to to provide a detailed account of the temple consisting of several doorways. ‘By this last doorway you enter the dark and mysterious sanctum sanctorum of the whole Buddhist faith. There is first a silver table, which stands before the shrine and await the worshipper’s gifts. You look through iron bars and behold a gilded shrine, shaped like a bell. This is a mere covering for six other shrines of decreasing size, one within the other. All are of solid gold with rubies, pearls, emeralds and other precious stones. Here are Oriental cat’s eyes encrusted into gold and silver. The two smallest of these shrines are covered with squarely cut rubies. The sacred tooth, invisible in these days, is contained in the smallest of all.’

A journey like no other

It is believed that Arahat Kema recovered the fourth left canine of Lord Buddha from the flames after the cremation and handed it over to the King of Kalinga in eastern India. For 800 years it became an object of veneration by Kalinga (present Orissa) kings. King Guhasiva during his reign, fearing that the relic being stolen by his enemy who declared war against him, entrusted it to his daughter Princess Hemamala and her husband Prince Dantha to take it to neighbouring Sri Lanka. King Kirti Sri Megawanna who reigned in Anuradhapura from 300-331 AD made the best of royal pageantry possible to receive the Sacred Tooth Relic of Lord Buddha which Princess Hemamala brought safely hidden amidst her tresses, 800 years after the passing away of Lord Buddha. Sri Lanka’s historic chronicle Mahavamsa records that the King having deposited the sacred relic in Dhammacakka Vihara (built by King Devanampiyatissa), further decreed that the sacred relic should be taken in parade around the city of Anuradhapura once a year. Mahavamsa further notes that the king spent over 900,000 kahapanas in celebrating the festival of the tooth relic. The famous Chinese Buddhist pilgrim traveller Fa Hien who visited Anuradhapura in 399 AD in his travelogue describes witnessing the celebrations replete with processions of jewel-encrusted elephants.

Thus began the tradition of the monarch of Lanka being the guardian of the sacred tooth relic. Its possession alone conferred on its owner a substantial claim to the sovereignty of the island. It was during the reign of King Vimaladarmasuriya I that the sacred tooth relic was deposited in a three-storied shrine near the palace of Kandy. His successors laboured to expand the shrine which came to be known as Dalada maligawa.

Insignia of the royalty

The relic was zealously guarded by our royals shifting its abode to multiple places of safety during foreign invasions. Prof. Lorna S. Dewaraja in her book, The Kandyan Kingdom of Sri Lanka, notes that the possession of the tooth relic alone conferred on its owner a substantial claim to the sovereignty of Sri Lanka and even Nayakkar kings ‘jealously guarded it specially when foreign invasions threatened its safety’. Prof. Dewaraja mentions that in the reigns of Sri Vijaya Rajasimha and Kirti Sri Rajasimha public exhibitions of the relic were held. ‘On both occasions a pavilion was erected in front of the Temple and the king himself exposed the relic to public view placing it on the palm of his hand. The scholar citing, several historical sources says that the practice which persists even today of displaying the relic to distinguished visitors from abroad prevailed even at that time, for Kirti Sri Rajasimha held a special exhibition of the relic for the benefit of the bhikkus and dignitaries who came from Siam. ‘The relic was held in great esteem in Siam, for the king sent a model of it to the Siamese monarch, much to his delight.’

During the 1818 rebellion in the uplands against the British rule, Wariyapola Sri Sumangala Thero smuggled the tooth relic from the Dalada Maligawa, fearing its seizure by the British and went into hiding in Hanguranketa. When the British captured the prelate and recovered the tooth relic, the rebellion too ended. John Davy in his account records that, ‘when the relic was taken, the effect its capture was astonishing and almost beyond the comprehension of the enlightened…after the recovery of the sacred relic, the possessor of which is considered by the natives the master of the country that is dedicated to it, the whole of the interior was speedily tranquilised.’

Exposition during the British rule

A descriptive account of the first Dalada exposition during the British rule is provided by Major Jonathan Forbes in Eleven Years in Ceylon. Forbes who was privy to the four-day pageantry in May 1828, replete with ‘Kandyan pipes’ and the ‘din of tom-toms’, notes that, ‘Fifty-three years had elapased since the King Kirti Sri had openly displayed the relic; and from the revolutions which had since taken place in the country, but few people remembered the ceremony, and still fewer had seen the Dalada.’ Further in his observations, Forbes notes: ‘in front of the silver altar on which the tooth was exposed a plain tabled was placed; to this the people approached one at a time and having seen the Dalada and deposited their gifts, they prostrated themselves, then passed on and made room for others. The offerings consisted of things the most heterogenous; gold chains and gold ornaments, gold, silver and copper coins and all denominations, clothes, priests’ vestments, flowers, sugar, ereca-nuts, betel-leaves.’

Exposition as an extended ritual

Ancient texts such as Dalada Siritha offers a comprehensive account of the rituals which need to be followed by kings to pay reverence to the sacred relic as well as a code of conduct associated with it. “Since Anuradhapura times, it had occupied the pride of place with daily rituals governing it. However, a systematic constitution governing Dalada came into being during the Kurunegala era with the compilation of Dalada Siritha,” says Prof. Wimal Hewamanage from the Department of Buddhist Studies, University of Colombo.

According to historical evidence, exposition of the tooth relic had been an extended ritual of the Dalada Perahera and during foreign invasions when perahera was not possible, there had been expositions only, says the scholar. “It is during the Kandyan kingdom that Dalada exposition evolved as a separate event. The first such under the British occupancy in 1828 is believed to have been to invoke the blessings of the sacred relic to induce rain after a prolonged drought as the ancient agrarian community of ours similar to many other Asian counterparts such as India and China strongly believed in the connection between the rains and the Divine.” The tradition of Dalada exposition independent of the Esala Perahera thus continued, says Prof. Hewamanage who says that the first such exposition after independence was held in 1952.