Temple of the Tooth
— — a relic the country walks around once a year.
Not only on a wall.
“The Sri Dalada Maligawa sits at the edge of Kandy Lake, the last royal city of Sri Lanka before the British came. Inside, behind layers of gold and ivory, rests a tooth that the island has guarded since the fourth century. Drums begin at dawn. Once a year, in July or August, the relic leaves on the back of a tusker and the whole city walks beside it for ten nights. The rest of the year the temple is quieter, lotus offerings on the white walls, the lake outside holding the reflection. from the studio
Temple of the Tooth, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic, Sri Dalada Maligawa, stands inside the royal palace complex of the former Kingdom of Kandy, on the north shore of Kandy Lake at roughly 500 metres elevation. The relic — held to be a tooth of the Buddha — arrived on the island in the fourth century and has been moved between capitals, hidden, recovered, and finally settled here in the late sixteenth century by King Vimaladharmasuriya I. The present shrine, with its moated walls and golden-roofed inner sanctum, was completed under the Nayakkar kings in the eighteenth century. The Sacred City of Kandy was inscribed by UNESCO in 1988.
For ten nights each year, in the lunar month of Esala, the relic leaves the temple in a procession the Sinhala calendar has kept since at least the fourth century. The Esala Perahera moves through Kandy with more than a hundred caparisoned elephants, fire dancers, whip-crackers, and Kandyan drummers, the casket of the relic rising on the back of the lead tusker. The final Randoli Perahera draws the largest crowds. The dates shift with the moon — usually late July or early August — and end on the night of the August full moon.
The temple is open daily, with three daily pujas at roughly 5:30 a.m., 9:30 a.m., and 6:30 p.m., when the upper chamber housing the relic casket is opened to viewing. The relic itself is not displayed; visitors pass the inner shrine and offer lotus. Dress is conservative — shoulders and knees covered, shoes removed at the gate. Security at the entrance is thorough after the 1998 bombing, which damaged the façade and was later restored. Kandy is reached from Colombo by a four-hour train through tea country, one of the great rail journeys in South Asia.