Tales of the Tooth
Many Buddhists belive it is the most precious thing in the world. Indeed wars have been fought over it. Yet it is never put on public display: it is kept in a golden lotus beneath six caskets of dimin- ishing scale. The outer one, about 1.2 metres (5 ft) in height, is of silver gilt, but all the others are of beaten gold. It is the Tooth.On attaining Nirvana, the Buddha was cremated, but mourners managed to rescue parts of his mortal remains. Some important relics were passed on to Sri Lanka, including a cutting from the sacred Bo tree, his begging bowl, his collarbone and strands of hair. Others have since turned up on the island - nail clippings, for example. The collarbone demonstrated its sanctity when it arrived in Anuradhapura, rocketing to an altitude of 1,500 metres (5,000 ft) and belching flames and streams of water. The Bo tree cutting also shot into the sky on arrival, emitting a beautiful halo of six colours. 

Buddha's left eye-tooth, however, remained in the Kalinga kingdom in India, until seven centuries after his death, when its future was j thrown into doubt by a militant resurgence of j Hinduism. It is said that it fell into Hindu hands, but attempts to destroy it with a 1 sledge-hammer SUCceeded only in breaking ;j the hammer. The Hindus gave it back. When King Guhasiva of Kalinga faced , defeat, the Tooth was hidden in his daughter HemamaJa's hair and she was then spirited away to Sri Lanka. Its arrival caused a sen- sation, and a suitable temple was built as its new home.

The Perahera procession was initiated soon afterwards, with the Tooth paraded through the streets of the ancient capital on the back of a white elephant.With the growing tradition that whoever possessed the Tooth had the right to rule Sri Lanka, the relic was moved around according to the vicissitudes of troubled times. When Marco Polo arrived at the behest of Kublai Khan in the; late 13th century, invaders from south India had carried off the Tooth and no Sinhalese king could control the situation. King Parakrama of Polonnaruwa fought a war to get the Tooth back from the Tamils, and from then on a special bodyguard was assigned to look after it. In the 16th century, the Portuguese capo tured the Tooth and shipped it to Goa where, before the assembled eyes of the Portuguese viceroy, a bishop and numerous dignitaries, it was pounded to dust, the dust burnt, and the ashes thrown into the sea.

That should have put paid to the Tooth, but apparently not so. The remnants re-assembled themselves on the seabed, enabling the Tooth to fly back to the island of its own accord. It was while the Tooth was briefly in un- believing British hands after the fall of Kandy in 1815 that the caskets were opened up. They decided that the discoloured object encircled by a gold thread was definitely a tooth, but that at 5 cm (2 inches) in length it was more likely to have come from a croco- dile than a human being. But then they forgot that the footprint on Adam's Peak , which some believe to be the Buddha's, is metre (3 ft) long.