A Pagoda Lost and Rebuilt

The relic's home has been rebuilt more than once. Under the Liao, in 1071, a noblewoman connected to the dynasty's chief minister endowed the Zhaoxian Pagoda at what was then Longquan Temple to enshrine the tooth, and an inscription recorded the act. That brick pagoda stood for more than eight centuries until 1900, when it was wrecked by artillery during the foreign suppression of the Boxer Uprising. Monks sifting the ruins the following year recovered a stone casket, and inside it the relic together with an inscription confirming its identity.

The relic was quietly kept until the People's Republic, with the backing of the central government and the newly organised Buddhist Association of China, undertook to house it properly. Between 1957 and 1964 a new octagonal pagoda, the Buddha Tooth Relic Pagoda, rose about a hundred metres from the ruined Liao tower; some fifty metres tall and thirteen storeys high, it enshrines the relic in a hall on its second level and was formally completed on 26 June 1964.