Temple of the Tooth

I hadn’t been on foot in Kandy for several weeks and I had a few miscellaneous errands to run, including a visit to Plastic Housewares Man for more umbrellas since our household was down to zero umbrellas. The primary purpose of my trip, however, was to visit the Temple of the Tooth. The temple housed a relic said to be a canine tooth snatched from the Buddha’s funeral pyre and brought to Sri Lanka by the Charavari king Asoka’s daughter during his great spread of Buddhism. I could see the golden roof of the temple every day from my patio and kitchen window, and I had walked past the entrance many times, but in my three months of residence in Kandy I had never been inside. I wanted to go alone for my first trip so I would have to wonder about the things I saw, and try to figure them out on my own, instead of having a ready-made tour guide in Dan.

Intending to be a tourist at least for the morning, I walked down the hill and around the edge of the lake along the white, rounded, parapet retaining wall with its filigree cut-out holes used for small oil lamps during pre-electric Christmas light festival times. This style of wall is meant to evoke rolling clouds and is found marking the perimeter of most temples in Sri Lanka. Every night silver dollar sized red clay lamps burning with oil nestle in the cutouts of the parapet walls demarcating simple roadside shrines all over Sri Lanka. I scanned the lake over the top of the wall, suddenly spotting one of the six-foot monitor lizards patrolling the edge of the lake. The massive lizard swam slowly along the edge of the wall, perhaps waiting for an unfortunate stray dog or clumsy tourist. “That’s one tough lizard to live in that muck,” I thought as it swam past an empty yogurt cup and a Pepsi can. Until approximately up to two decades ago, fresh water from this lake was suitable for human consumption, but this was difficult to imagine now. Some sewers still dumped directly into the lake. Now the lake stank and trash floated in its corners.

I made my way to the throng at the shoe coral, one man was taking shoes and giving back little cardboard numbers and returning shoes all at once, servicing about 15 people at a time. I noticed that he would basically hand anyone any shoe they indicated and the cardboard tag system didn’t seemed correlated to shelf organization or anything else. Once barefoot I negotiated the grimy paved lot to the entrance to the Temple grounds. In Sri Lanka it is not unusual to see laborers or monks going barefoot in the filthy streets, but I found the brief walk revolting. In South Asia forced premature shoe removal is common at religious sights either abandoned or presently functioning. I have felt bat guano crunching under my feet and had to sidestep wasps in the vacant temples of Bagan, the ruins of an enormous monastic compound in Burma. One of my Judeo-Christian-influenced cultural beliefs turned out to be that you should be able to keep your shoes on at all times, at least while outdoors. In the case of a Muslim mosque on the other hand, I understand shoe removal. It makes sense. You take off your shoes before going inside because people put their heads down on the carpet. I have never entered a mosque that was not fastidiously clean and continuously vacuumed. Usually the carpet is very high quality and feels nice under bare feet, plus, I have never heard of anyone getting ringworm from a visit to the mosque.

At the steps of the entrance gate I waited in a herd for a pat-down and to have my bag searched. In other countries this would have been a line, but here in Sri Lanka you had to shove forward constantly or be pushed aside. Once through the main gate I noticed some women were having their bags X-rayed and receiving tickets, so I waited in this line also. While I was in line a short man came up behind me and started to tout me, saying “Madam come this way…” I couldn’t see his face and I refused to acknowledge him until he went away. As it turned out, the contents of my bad did not qualify for X-ray, but I felt better safe than sorry. I then started down the 200 meter cement walkway straight toward the main temple. I picked out a few women and memorized their saree patterns so that I could track their movements through the temple. I selected a young woman in a white saree with a small royal blue floral pattern draped in the classic Indian nevi style and an old woman in a white saree with a small tan floral pattern draped in the Kandyan style. There were not together but seemed to move at about the same pace.

I followed the women around the corner to the next pat-down area. As I was about to get in line behind the royal-blue patterned woman, a tout stepped directly in my path, “come over to here,” he said, indicating the neighboring devali shrine by a courtly gesture with his right hand, “open time now,” he finished with a smile on his face. I looked directly at him, stunned that he had stepped to me in this fashion. He was tall, well-dressed, and younger than the average tout. He clearly thought himself as handsome and genteel. Wordlessly I turned into the pat-down booth. “Oh! So proud!” I hear him yell at me as the police woman ran her hands over my body.

After the second pat-down we all started up the steps to the temple, across a moat, to the right, up some more steps, into a tunnel, and I started to get nervous that perhaps I should have bought a ticket some place way back before the shoe-drop. When we came out of the tunnel we took a left up some more steps and then at the entrance to the inner courtyard I saw the ticket booth. An old man pointed to the price list and tried to recruit me saying “wouldn’t you like someone to show the temple to you, to explain?” His approach was different; he was straightforward in offering services, not trying to drag me off someplace else. I remembered the official guides I had used in India who were very professional and could really bring a place to life, but by this time I was hardened into silence and moved past him into the inner courtyard.

I had arrived in time for the morning puja, or offering, at 10:15. “Puja” is a general term for offerings conducted first in Hindu and then Buddhist traditions. In Hinduism the idea is that the person performing the puja hosts the deity, washing the statue, rubbing it with oils, offering it food, sound, and fire. Priests perform elaborate pujas at temples behind closed doors, but laypeople can also perform small pujas in their homes. In the Hindu tradition the onlookers then get to eat the food offered to the gods but in Buddhism and Jainism the food is thrown away and is a cultural abhorrence to consume.

Two drummers and a clarinet player were already in full swing on the ground floor in front of the two-storey free-standing inner shrine building, but nobody seemed inclined to stop and watch. I spotted the older woman in the tan-patterned saree and followed her up a set of stairs. At the top of the stairs was a long hall running the length of the building with the upper floor of the inner shrine building as its focus. Devotees sat four deep along the back wall of the balcony facing the top floor of the inner shrine building. Some people prayed with their hands in prayer at their hearts or on top of their heads, others chanted to themselves, and a few stared off into space. There was a long table for flower offerings in front of the entrance to the inner shrine area, lotus, sal, and jasmine flowers were already pile up a foot high on the table. I looked at the pretty flowers and thought that I would much rather take them home and put them in water than leave them in a heap, “But that’s probably the point,” I decided.

I had never encountered a religious structure with this set-up. On my first trip to Southeast Asia I had generally found Buddhist temples to be very uninviting, not places you would like to remain for any length of time for quiet contemplation. I toured temples with stunningly beautiful exteriors and amazing Buddha statues on the inside, but rarely did I want to just sink to the floor, open my journal, and start writing as I often did in a church or mosque. I found myself a spot on the worn laminate floor and started to observe my surroundings. One of the first things I found surprising was that there was no Buddha image visible. No statue, no painting, not even and abstraction of the Buddha like a Dharma wheel or an empty throne. Dan had already explained to me that a better translation for “Temple of the Tooth,” was “Palace of the Tooth.” What we call the temple today is leftover pieces from the palace of the Kandyian kings. There was a very make-shift feel to the set-up, I could see how the space was originally constructed for the royal court and not intended for heavy public traffic.

I knew from skimming academic sources that a very scripted and elaborate ritual was taking place behind the closed doors. The monks first made themselves ritually pure and then offered curries, rice, sweets, water, a toothpick, cloth, a fan, a yak tail, a bell, camphor, fragrant scent, and flowers to the relic first at dawn and again before lunch. Rather than wash the reliquary itself, the monks act out ritual cleaning of the face and body of the Buddha. Dan has observed the preparation of the meal and told me that they also sometimes make smoothies for the relic. The relic, like the Buddha and the monks, does not eat after noon. None of the 50 or so gathered observers on the floor were able to witness any of these proceedings. Our only link to the action was the change in rhythm and accent of the music which I imagined to bear some relation to the ceremony progressing in the inner sanctuary.

Hindu ceremonies mostly take place in great secrecy also, but the lay participants get the blessed food to consume to feel a greater connection with their god. Looking around at the other people on the floor I wondered how this ceremony affected them spiritually. There wasn’t much to see and no sermon being preached to stimulate their minds. I knew it was over when the drumming stopped and people started to drift away. I followed the old woman down another set up steps and into the octagonal library room with a monk reading a palm leaf manuscript at a desk along one wall and a gold-tone Buddha statue in the middle. Still trailing the old woman I followed her in another small shrine room with statues of the Buddha and his two main disciples behind a wall of glass.

On my way out of the temple I stopped by the Raja Tusker museum where the last great elephant to bear the tooth relic in the Perahera parade is taxidermied. I found Raja in a small out building behind a glass wall with photos documenting his life along the walls.

Raja stands 12 feet at the shoulder and carried the relic for 50 years before his death in 1988. The temple is has been unable to replace Raja since the ideal elephant would have some unusual characteristics, including a flat back and a tail that touches the ground. Since temple elephants must be celibate, his DNA has been lost. After a peek at Raja, I headed back down the long walk and lawn leading to the temple and exited the compound to the side far away from my shoes. I walked with my barefeet past the stalls selling flowers, clay lamps, and oils for offerings, like a parking lot pilgrim.