The Buddhas Tooth: Western Tales of a Sri Lankan Relic (Buddhism and Modernity)

John S. Strong unravels the storm of influences shaping the received narratives of two iconic sacred objects.Bodily relics such as hairs, teeth, fingernails, pieces of bonesupposedly from the Buddha himselfhave long served as objects of veneration for many Buddhists. Unsurprisingly, when Western colonial powers subjugated populations in South Asia, they used, manipulated, redefined, and even destroyed these objects to exert control.In The Buddhas Tooth, John S. Strong examines Western stories, from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, surrounding two significant Sri Lankan sacred objects to illuminate and concretize colonial attitudes toward Asian religions. First, he analyzes a tale about the Portuguese capture and public destruction, in the midsixteenth century, of a tooth later identified as a relic of the Buddha. Second, he switches gears to look at the nineteenthcentury saga of British dealings with another tooth relic of the Buddhathe famous Da?ada enshrined in a temple in Kandyfrom 1815, when it was taken over by English forces, to 1954, when it was visited by Queen Elizabeth II. As Strong reveals, the stories of both the Portuguese tooth and the Kandyan tooth reflect nascent and developing Western understandings of Buddhism, realizations of the cosmopolitan nature of the tooth, and tensions between secular and religious interests.