Temple of the Tooth | Kandy
Sri Dalada Maligawa or the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic is a Buddhist temple in the city of Kandy, Sri Lanka. It is located in the royal palace complex of the former Kingdom of Kandy, which houses the relic of the tooth of Buddha. Since ancient times,the relic has played an important role in local politics because it is believed that whoever holds the relic holds the governance of the country.
Kandy was the last capital of the Sri Lankan kings and is a UNESCO world heritage site partly due to the temple.
Monks of the two chapters of Malwatte and Asgiriya conduct daily worship in the inner chamber of the temple. Rituals are performed three times daily: at dawn, at noon and in the evenings. On Wednesdays there is a symbolic bathing of the relic with an herbal preparation made from scented water and fragrant flowers, called Nanumura Mangallaya. This holy water is believed to contain healing powers and is distributed among those present.
History
After the cremation, Buddha's relics were distributed among various kingdoms that sought them. The relics were enshrined in funerary mounds called the stupa. However, Buddha's four canine teeth were separately enshrined and worshipped. I am reporting here stuff which is a mixture of history and legend. According to what I have read, the right canine was worshipped by the king of gods, Sakra. Another tooth relic was worshipped by the king of Gandhara, which is located in modern-day Pakistan. The third tooth relic was taken away by the Nagas who worshipped it in a golden shrine room. The fourth, the left canine was given to the king of Kalinga in Eastern India.
It's the fourth tooth, the tooth relic of the Kalinga, that is today enshrined at the Sri Dalada Maligawa in Kandy. It had become an object of great veneration by generations of Kalinga kings until it earned the wrath of brahmanical followers. Fanatical rulers attempted many times to destroy the Relic. Yet it miraculously survived all such atrocities. For this reason, many kings tried to get hold of it for personal veneration. The last Indian ruler to possess the Tooth relic was Guhasiva of Kalinga (c.4th century AD).
When a neighboring kingdom made war with Guhasiva to get hold of the Tooth relic, for its safety, the tooth relic was taken out of India. At that time, Buddhism was already well established in Sri Lanka, and the island's rulers maintained close relations with the Indian states that fostered Buddhism. So when the Kalinga ruler were under threat from loosing the teeth, he decided to send it to his friend, the king of Anuradhapura, the ancient Sri Lankan capital.
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