Sir Henry Conjectures
That The Deportation Of This Vessel, The Palladium Of The True Gandhara
(Peshawar), Was Accompanied By A Popular Emigration, And Thus Accounts For
The Transfer Of That Name Also To The Chief City Of Arachosia.
(Koeppen,
I. 526; Fah-hian, p. 36; H. Tsang, II.
106; J.R.A.S. XI. 127.)
Sir E. Tennent, through Mr. Wylie (to whom this book owes so much),
obtained the following curious Chinese extract referring to Ceylon
(written 1350): "In front of the image of Buddha there is a sacred bowl,
which is neither made of jade nor copper, nor iron; it is of a purple
colour, and glossy, and when struck it sounds like glass. At the
commencement of the Yuen Dynasty (i.e. under Kublai) three separate
envoys were sent to obtain it." Sanang Setzen also corroborates Marco's
statement: "Thus did the Khaghan (Kublai) cause the sun of religion to
rise over the dark land of the Mongols; he also procured from India images
and reliques of Buddha; among others the Patra of Buddha, which was
presented to him by the four kings (of the cardinal points), and also the
chandana chu" (a miraculous sandal-wood image). (Tennent, I. 622;
Schmidt, p. 119.)
The text also says that several teeth of Buddha were preserved in
Ceylon, and that the Kaan's embassy obtained two molars. Doubtless the
envoys were imposed on; no solitary case in the amazing history of that
relique, for the Dalada, or tooth relique, seems in all historic times
to have been unique. This, "the left canine tooth" of the Buddha, is
related to have been preserved for 800 years at Dantapura
("Odontopolis"), in Kalinga, generally supposed to be the modern Puri or
Jagannath. Here the Brahmans once captured it and carried it off to
Palibothra, where they tried in vain to destroy it. Its miraculous
resistance converted the king, who sent it back to Kalinga. About A.D. 311
the daughter of King Guhasiva fled with it to Ceylon. In the beginning of
the 14th century it was captured by the Tamuls and carried to the Pandya
country on the continent, but recovered some years later by King Parakrama
III., who went in person to treat for it. In 1560 the Portuguese got
possession of it and took it to Goa. The King of Pegu, who then reigned,
probably the most powerful and wealthy monarch who has ever ruled in
Further India, made unlimited offers in exchange for the tooth; but the
archbishop prevented the viceroy from yielding to these temptations, and
it was solemnly pounded to atoms by the prelate, then cast into a charcoal
fire, and finally its ashes thrown into the river of Goa.
The King of Pegu was, however, informed by a crafty minister of the King
of Ceylon that only a sham tooth had been destroyed by the Portuguese, and
that the real relique was still safe. This he obtained by extraordinary
presents, and the account of its reception at Pegu, as quoted by Tennent
from De Couto, is a curious parallel to Marco's narrative of the Great
Kaan's reception of the Ceylon reliques at Cambaluc. The extraordinary
object still so solemnly preserved at Kandy is another forgery, set up
about the same time. So the immediate result of the viceroy's virtue was
that two reliques were worshipped instead of one!
The possession of the tooth has always been a great object of desire to
Buddhist sovereigns. In the 11th century King Anarauhta, of Burmah, sent a
mission to Ceylon to endeavour to procure it, but he could obtain only a
"miraculous emanation" of the relique. A tower to contain the sacred tooth
was (1855), however, one of the buildings in the palace court of Amarapura.
A few years ago the King of Burma repeated the mission of his remote
predecessor, but obtained only a model, and this has been deposited
within the walls of the palace at Mandale, the new capital. (Turnour in
J.A.S.B. VI. 856 seqq.; Koeppen, I. 521; Tennent, I. 388, II. 198
seqq.; MS. Note by Sir A. Phayre; Mission to Ava, 136.)
Of the four eye-teeth of Sakya, one, it is related, passed to the heaven
of Indra; the second to the capital of Gandhara; the third to Kalinga; the
fourth to the snake-gods. The Gandhara tooth was perhaps, like the
alms-bowl, carried off by a Sassanid invasion, and may be identical with
that tooth of Fo, which the Chinese annals state to have been brought to
China in A.D. 530 by a Persian embassy. A tooth of Buddha is now shown in a
monastery at Fu-chau; but whether this be either the Sassanian present, or
that got from Ceylon by Kublai, is unknown. Other teeth of Buddha were
shown in Hiuen Tsang's time at Balkh, at Nagarahara (or Jalalabad), in
Kashmir, and at Kanauj. (Koeppen, u.s.; Fortune, II. 108; H. Tsang,
II. 31, 80, 263.)
[Illustration: Teeth of Budda.
1. At Kandy, after Tennent. 2. At Fu-Chau from Fortune.]
NOTE 7. - Fa-hian writes of the alms-pot at Peshawar, that poor people
could fill it with a few flowers, whilst a rich man should not be able to
do so with 100, nay, with 1000 or 10,000 bushels of rice; a parable
doubtless originally carrying a lesson, like Our Lord's remark on the
widow's mite, but which hardened eventually into some foolish story like
that in the text.
The modern Mussulman story at Kandahar is that the alms-pot will contain
any quantity of liquor without overflowing.
This Patra is the Holy Grail of Buddhism. Mystical powers of nourishment
are ascribed also to the Grail in the European legends. German scholars
have traced in the romances of the Grail remarkable indications of
Oriental origin. It is not impossible that the alms-pot of Buddha was the
prime source of them. Read the prophetic history of the Patra as Fa-hian
heard it in India (p. 161); its mysterious wanderings over Asia till it is
taken up into the heaven Tushita where Maitreya the Future Buddha
dwells.
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