Kandy · Temple of the Tooth Relic | Sri Lanka 🇱🇰

🦷 Kandy · Temple of the Tooth Relic, located in Kandy, the third ancient capital of Sri Lanka. ☺️ 👣The temple, founded in 1595, enshrines the Tooth Relic of the Buddha, a national treasure of Sri Lanka. Adjacent to the Kandy Royal Palace, it is the most sacred site in Sri Lanka. 🦷 The Tooth Relic is a physical relic of the Buddha. The one preserved in Sri Lanka is his left upper canine tooth. 🦷 It is said to have been brought to Sri Lanka in the 4th century AD by a princess from the Kalinga kingdom in southeastern India, which was suffering from war, and presented to the king of Anuradhapura.🌈🌈 😊 Within the ruins of the ancient city of Anuradhapura, there are still remains of temples where the Tooth Relic was enshrined. Records in Faxian's Record of the Buddhist Kingdoms mention that the Tooth Relic was regularly taken in procession to Abhayagiri Vihara for worship.🍰 🦷 However, during the Anuradhapura period, due to the presence of the Sacred Bodhi Tree, the Tooth Relic did not hold the supreme status it would later acquire.💐 During the Polonnaruwa period, as royal power became unstable, the Tooth Relic truly became a symbol of legitimate political authority. It was enshrined in the Atadage, Vatadage, and Hetadage within the Quadrangle, guarded day and night by official troops. 🦷 After the 13th century, with Tamil invasions, the island fell into division and chaos. For about 300 years, power shifted among South Indian forces, local royal clans, powerful ministers, and maternal relatives, leading to the formation of states such as the Jaffna Kingdom in the northwest and the Kotte Kingdom in the southwest.🙊🙊 🏖️The Tooth Relic, like the Imperial Seal of China during the late Han Dynasty, was passed around with shifting powers, though it remained mostly in the hands of Sinhalese regimes. 🦷 In this context, Kandy, located in the central highlands, once a refuge for monastic 💞communities and a gathering place for Sinhalese people, was established as the regional capital by local rulers in 1474 AD. In 1521 AD, Kandy broke away from its status as a vassal of the Kotte Kingdom, and with the Portuguese conquest of the Kotte Kingdom (1597 AD) and the Jaffna Kingdom (1619 AD), it became the only independent indigenous. 🎁 It is said that the Portuguese invasion of Kandy in the mid-16th century destroyed the Tooth Relic, a claim the Sinhalese deny.🎋 🦷 In the 1590s, King Vimala Dharma Suriya I (r. 1591-1604), who had seized the throne, claimed to have regained the Tooth Relic. He built the Temple of the Tooth Relic within the Kandy Royal Palace to consolidate his power through worship of the relic.🎄 💖💖With a stable regime, the temple was expanded between 1687-1707 and 1747-1782 AD, and the iconic white stupa at the corner was added in 1803. This is the Temple of the Tooth Relic we see today. 🦷 The core part of the temple has two floors, supported by 64 wooden pillars, with exquisitely carved beams and painted decorations. 🎫 The Tooth Relic is housed in a lavishly decorated golden casket on the second floor, open for viewing only during specific daily ceremonies. Since 1775, the temple has continued the historic Tooth Relic Festival: every year for 7 consecutive days between July and August, the relic is paraded through the city on the back of an elephant, accompanied by over a hundred elaborately decorated elephants and thousands of dancers and drummers, with people watching along the route, creating a grand spectacle.🌸 🦷 The area around today's Temple of the Tooth Relic also includes a European-style royal audience hall, a Buddhist museum, and traditional-style residences of the king and his consorts, now serving as a national museum and a specialized small museum.🏞️🏞️ Just outside lies the beautiful Kandy Lake, while on the other side are a Christian church and a Hindu temple.🍟🍟 #TempleoftheToothRelic#Kandy#SriLanka