THE LOTOS FLOWER.
The boys thought Buddha must have been a man of more than gigantic size if the relic really belonged to him, as it is nearly two inches long, and resembles the tooth of a crocodile much more than that of a man. No one is permitted to touch it; but for several years after the capture of Kandy by the British the tooth was in their possession, and during that time it was carefully examined. It was pronounced nothing but a piece of ivory which had become yellow with age, and possibly from lying so long on the golden lotos. The latter is a very pretty work of art, and an excellent representation of the lotos flower as it appears on the walls of Egyptian and Indian temples.
This tooth has a curious history. According to the Buddhist chronicles, it was secured at the funeral of Buddha and carried to a temple in India, where it was kept 800 years. Then there was a war for its possession, and the king who held it sent his daughter with it to Ceylon: she concealed it in the tresses of her hair, and was wrecked on the coast of India, where the tooth was buried for several days in the sand. Then a new ship was obtained, the tooth was dug up, and the journey to Ceylon completed.
The relic was kept in Ceylon a couple of hundred years, and then it went back to India, only to return again in a century or so to Ceylon. It has been moved about repeatedly—has been to China and Burmah, and there is a Portuguese account that it was destroyed by them, the viceroy himself pounding it in a mortar, burning the powdered bone in a brazier, and then throwing the ashes into the river. The account of its destruction is given in detail by several historians, but the priests of Kandy say it is entirely false, and the tooth was never in the possession of the Portuguese. It is pretty certain they destroyed something which they supposed to be the tooth, as it is a matter of history that the King of Pegu, on learning that the Portuguese were in possession of the relic, sent an embassy to negotiate for it, and offered a sum equal to a quarter of a million dollars for it, which was refused.
There was another relic of Buddha formerly exhibited in Ceylon—the bowl that he carried for the collection of offerings. All begging saints carry a bowl for the receipt of alms, generally a cocoa-nut shell. The one in question had wonderful properties; a poor man could fill it with a few flowers, but a rich man could not do so with 100, 1000, or even 10,000 bushels of rice! An army could drink from it without exhausting it, or even reducing the quantity of liquid it contained. The Mohammedans say that this bowl belonged to Adam, the father of mankind, when he lived in Ceylon, and descended from him to Buddha. It passed through many countries, having visited India, Persia, several provinces of India, and also China and Thibet. The trace of it has been lost for several centuries.
As they left the temple, after paying the priest for showing them the sacred relic, one of the boys asked if Buddhism was the only religion in Ceylon.
"Not by any means," answered the Doctor. "According to history, Buddha had a great deal of trouble in converting the Cingalese, as they were very ardent idolaters, and addicted to the worship of trees and serpents. Portions of the ancient faith still continue in the universal dread that the Cingalese have of killing a cobra; they will not destroy it with a blow from a stick or stone, but they put it in a bag and throw it in a river, so that it can have a chance of escape. Until very recently there was a temple at Jaffna dedicated to the snake goddess, and maintained by some of the descendants of the idolatrous priesthood.
"The Cingalese," the Doctor continued, "have great faith in demons, and every village has its demon-priest who lives upon the fears of the people. Everything that goes wrong is ascribed to the demons; and if a man falls sick or is injured, the priest is called to drive away the evil spirit that has caused the trouble.
"The most numerous demons are the yakkoes, who are supposed to live in old trees, and for this reason the natives will not have any old trees near their dwellings. They also set aside the fruit of certain trees in their gardens for the use of the demons, and sometimes a portion of the rice crop in a field is left ungathered for the same purpose. There is a general belief in sorcery and witchcraft, especially in the north of the island: the most of the native doctors are sorcerers, and when they cannot perform a cure with medicines they resort to incantations."