2-981-768 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Dalada as it is exhibited for the worship of the Cinghalese, 1876. 'The tooth relic has a long and eventful history, which includes the strong probability that it is not even the tooth which it pretends to be, and that it could not, from its size and appearance be the tooth of Buddha, or of any human being...The Cinghalese believe that when the Portuguese scattered the dust of the tooth that Buddha himself, by his divine power, gathered all the particles together again, and that they were discovered in their previous form of the tooth, preserved in the centre of a budding lotus...Buddha was, at least so the Cinghalese Buddhists believe, 27 ft. in height, and it would have required such a man to have a dental bone of the dimensions of the Dalada. It is about 1½ in. in length, and looks like a bit of bone, or old ivory...'. From "Illustrated London News", 1876.