Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/96

 BUDDHIST ARCHITECTURE. BOOK I. dagaba completed." 1 It is possible that at each successive addition some new deposit was made ; at least most of the topes examined in Afghanistan and the Panjab, which show signs of these successive increments, seem also to have had successive deposits, one above the other. Of the four canine teeth of Sakyamuni, one is said to have been honoured among the Devas or gods, another among the Nagas or water-spirits, the third was carried to Gandhara, 2 and the fourth to Kalinga. Little or nothing is related of the first three ; the most celebrated is the left canine tooth. At the original distribution it is said to have fallen to the lot of Orissa, and to have been enshrined in a town called from that circum- stance " Dantapura." This, most probably, was near the modern town of Kalingapatam ; or possibly, as has been supposed, the celebrated temple of Jagannath, which now flourishes at Puri, may be on the site of the temple to which the tooth belonged. Be this as it may, it seems to have remained there in peace for more than eight centuries, when Guha^iva, the king of the country, being attracted by some miracles performed by it, and by the demeanour of the priests, became converted from the Brahmanical cult, to which he had belonged, to the religion of Buddha. The dispossessed Brahmans thereon complained to his suzerain lord, resident at Pataliputra, in the narrative called only by his title Pandu. He ordered the tooth to be brought to the capital, when, from the wonders it exhibited, he was con- verted also; but this, and the excitement it caused, led to its being ultimately conveyed surreptitiously to Ceylon, where it is said to have arrived about the year 310; and in spite of various vicissitudes, its representative still remains in British custody, the palladium of the kingdom, as it has been regarded during the last sixteen centuries. 3 Almost as celebrated was the begging -pot of Sakyamuni, which was long kept in a dagaba or vihara erected by Kanishka at Peshawar, and worshipped with the greatest reverence. 4 After 1 Abstracted from the ' MaMwansa,' chap. I. 2 It was preserved at Nagara or Nagarahara near Jalalabad, where Fah- Ilian, A.D. 400, in his I3th chapter describes it as perfect. Hiouen Thsang, ' Memoires,' tome ii. p. 97, describes the stupa as ruined, and the tooth having disappeared. Beal, ' Buddhist Records,' vol. i. p. 92. 3 The principal particulars of this story are contained in a Singalese work called the ' Daladavamsa,' translated by Sir Mutu Comara Swamy. See also 'Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society' i (N.S.) vol. iii. pp. 132 et seqq. ; 'Tree and Serpent Worship,' pp. 174 et seqq. ; S. Hardy's ' Eastern Monachism,' pp. 224(7"; and Dr J. Gerson da Cunha's ' Memoir on the History of the Tooth Relic,' in 'Journal of the Bombay Br. Royal Asiatic Society,' vol. xi. pp. 115- 146. 4 ' Foe Koue Ki,' ch. xii. pp. 77, 82, 83 ; Beal's 'Travels of Fah-Hian,' pp. 36- 37, or ' Buddhist Records,' vol. i. introd. pp. xxxii., xxxiii. Conf. Cunningham, ' Archreological Reports,' vol. xvi. pp. 8-1 1, and plate 3.