Veneration and Significance

The Sacred Tooth Relic is among the most venerated objects in Theravada Buddhism and the single most important religious symbol in Sri Lanka. Daily services, the thevava, are performed before the relic three times a day with drumming and offerings, and pilgrims queue to pay respect before the closed inner shrine during the brief periods when it is opened. The relic's political meaning has never entirely faded: through the Kandyan kingdom and beyond, custody of the tooth conferred legitimacy, and even in the modern republic the temple remains a site where religious and national identity meet.

The relic's public face is the Esala Perahera of Kandy, held over ten nights in the lunar month of Esala (July or August). A gold replica of the relic casket rides atop the Maligawa Tusker, the lead temple elephant, escorted by hundreds of dancers, fire-twirlers, whip-crackers and drummers in one of Asia's great religious processions. The relic itself does not leave the temple. Because the tooth is shielded within its nested caskets and shown only by the caskets, the tradition maintains a deliberate reticence about the object, a reticence that is itself part of its sanctity and part of why it has never been examined.