Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic

Overview

The Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic (Sri Dalada Maligawa) is a Buddhist temple in Kandy, a city in the central highlands of Sri Lanka. The temple houses a tooth that Buddhists venerate as a relic of the Buddha, the founder of Buddhism. Ritual services take place before the relic chamber daily, and an annual procession carries the relic casket through the city. Kandy is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Present

The Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic in Kandy is an active Buddhist temple under a shared custodianship: the chief monks of the Malwathu and Asgiri chapters, the two senior monastic communities of Kandy, and the Diyawadana Nilame, the temple's chief lay custodian, together hold responsibility for the relic. Monks of the two chapters conduct ritual services, known as Thevava, in the inner shrine three times each day, at dawn, midday, and evening, accompanied by traditional drumming. Once a year, in the month of Esala (July to August), the temple holds the Kandy Esala Perahera, a series of night processions in which a casket representing the relic is carried through the city on an elephant, accompanied by drummers, dancers, and torch bearers.

Religious Significance

The Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic in Kandy houses what Buddhists venerate as a tooth of the Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, recovered according to Buddhist tradition from his cremation in India. Sri Lankan Buddhist tradition holds that the tooth was brought to the island in the 4th century CE, hidden in the hair of a princess. Many devotees regard the relic as representing the living presence of the Buddha, and the daily services follow the pattern of honours once paid to the Buddha himself. From its arrival, the relic became tied to kingship: the ruler who possessed it was regarded as holding the right to govern the island, and successive capitals were built around it. The relic reached Kandy at the end of the 16th century, when the city became the seat of the island's last kingdom. Pilgrims from across Sri Lanka and the wider Buddhist world come to make offerings before the relic chamber.

History & Structure

The Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic was built within the royal palace complex of Kandy after the city became the capital of the last independent Sinhala kingdom at the end of the 16th century, keeping the relic beside the seat of power. The present temple dates largely from the 17th and 18th centuries. It is located beside Kandy Lake, an artificial lake created in 1807 under the last king, Sri Vikrama Rajasinha. The complex is entered over a moat. Its white buildings with red-tiled roofs include the two-storey main shrine, where the relic rests on the upper floor inside seven nested golden caskets, and the Paththirippuwa, an octagonal pavilion added in the early 19th century. A golden canopy was raised over the relic chamber in 1987. The British deposed the last king in 1815 and ended the monarchy; worship at the temple continued. A bomb attack in 1998, during the Sri Lankan civil war, damaged the temple's entrance area, which was rebuilt. Kandy was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988.

Resources

• Official website: Sri Dalada Maligawa
• UNESCO: Sacred City of Kandy