Villefranche-sur-Mer

The Globetrotters Club

The travel club for independent travellers.

Buddha's Teeth

You may have read recently about one of Buddha's
fingers being brought from Thailand to Taipei in Taiwan. This got the
Beetle wondering about other parts of Buddha and where you can see them.
It is possible to see the casket containing the left incisor of the Buddha
in the sacred temple in Kandy, Sri Lanka. The Beetle queued up for some
time to walk past this sacred relic — it was certainly an experience!
It seems that there are three of Buddha's teeth in existence: one
in Sri Lanka, one in China and one in Thailand.

Buddhists in Sri Lanka celebrate “Buddha Tooth Festival”
which begins on 1st of August every year and lasts for twelve days. Every
night during the festival, grand parades can be seen starting from 8:00pm
until 11:00pm. The Chinese tooth was found by a monk in 475AD and hidden
in what is today Nanking, in China. In times of war, it was taken to Beijing
and placed in a stupa. In 1900 when Beijing was invaded, the stupa was
destroyed, and monks found the tooth in the rubble. In 1964, the stupa
was rebuilt and the tooth placed in the pagoda of Beijing. The third tooth
is alleged to have passed into Tibet and transferred to India during the
Cultural Revolution before its final resting place in Thailand.



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