Travel Day 1115 – Kandy, SRI LANKA
After watching the Esala Perahera for the past two days, it was more than time to see a little bit of the UNESCO enlisted Sacred City of Kandy…
UNESCO Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic in Kandy, Sri Lanka
Actually long before I arrived in Sri Lanka and long before I even knew anything about the Esala Perahera festival, I had heard about the sacred Buddhist city of Kandy. Some of my friends had come to Kandy for Buddhist retreats or Vipassanas and others came to simply visit what Kandy was manly famous for: Sri Dalada Maligawa, the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic. This temple was part of the royal palace complex and contained a tooth relic of the Buddha himself…
The tooth relic had initially come from Kalinga in India and after it arrived in Sri Lanka it had not only been a great symbol of Buddhism, but its possession became also synonymous with the power and ability to rule the entire country. The Sinhalese kingdoms possessed the tooth relic during most of Sri Lanka’s history and the popular tooth relic temple got moved every single time that the capital of the kingdom moved…
Inner Chamber with Golden Dagoba of the Tooth Relic in Kandy, Sri Lanka
The original capital of the Sinhalese kingdoms and the original Temple of the Sacred Tooth used to be in Anuradhapura, but after 1000 years of constant invasions from southern India, both, the capital and the temple got moved to Polonnaruwa. Finally another 500 years later when the Portuguese were controlling the coast and slowly encroaching on the island, the capital and the tooth relic temple got moved again in 1592 to its final location, Kandy. At last the British captured Kandy in 1815, but it still remained the spiritual capital for the Buddhist population of Sri Lanka…
For me personally Kandy was a welcome change from Colombo and a real relief in terms of temperature. It was located in higher altitude, was a really leafy green place and it was located right at a big lake. The lake was actually man-made in slave labor during the reign of one of the kings and he even built himself an island in the middle of it for his personal harem. Obviously the harem was long gone by now and so I rather visited the palace and temple complex of Kandy…
Inside the new Royal Palace of Kandy, Sri Lanka
I timed my visit with the morning puja but of course I wasn’t the only one with that idea and so I pushed or was pushed slowly through the entire Temple of the Sacred Tooth. Unfortunately the tooth relic itself could not be seen, but at least the doors were opened, exposing the golden dagoba under which the tooth relic was kept. After visiting the rest of the temple to the beat of the ceremonial drum music from the lover level, I decided to step outside and visit the new World Buddhism Museum…
For me this museum was actually more interesting than the temple and it was great to simply read along through all the rooms, each one being dedicated to one Buddhist country. While countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan hadn’t really been on my Buddhist radar, they provided a great chance to learn a little bit more about the history and importance of the Buddhism. A visit then at the old British Garrison Cemetery and a walk around the lake concluded my day. It had been a nice stay in the sacred UNESCO city of Kandy, but three days of tooth relic festival and tooth relic temple seemed enough and I was ready to move on tomorrow morning…
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