HORNS AND TUSKS 315 



If we are willing to accept the statement of the Portuguese, 

 Captain Joao Ribeyro in his "History of Ceylon" written 

 in 1685, and presented to the King of Portugal,* the vene- 

 rated tooth of Buddha, so jealously preserved in the Island of 

 Ceylon, was the tooth of an ape. Constantine of Braganza 

 seized it in 1560 and in his religious zeal preferred rather to 

 have it burned and the ashes scattered over the sea than to 

 accept the 800,000 francs offered as redemption by the King 

 of Pegu. However, the Cinghalese priests proved equal to 

 the emergency, and spread the report that the sacred tooth 

 had, by its own miraculous virtue, escaped from the hands 

 of the Portuguese, and had passed through the air until it 

 finally found a resting place on a rose; here it was duly found 

 by faithful Buddhists and replaced in its shrine. What 

 purports to be a tooth of Buddha is to be seen here at the 

 present day, although irreverent unbelievers insist that this 

 tooth, which is 3 in. long, is in reality a shaped piece of 

 ivory, t 



The veneration of the supposed tooth of the Buddha in 

 India finds a kind of parallel in the honour bestowed upon 

 the teeth of the reigning sovereigns of Cassange, in Angola, 

 Africa. When one of these kings or jag as dies, one of his 

 teeth is drawn from his jaw and reverently placed in a box 

 which contains a tooth of each of his predecessors. This 

 tooth-shrine is considered the most precious of the crown 

 treasures, and its ownership serves to legitimize each of the 

 successive kings of Cassange.t 



Many superstitions exist as to the teeth and teething, one 

 of them being that when the teeth are slow in cutting 



*J. Ribeyro, "Histoire de I'lsle de Ceylon," French transl. by Abbe le Grand, Amster- 

 dam, 1701, pp. 118, 119; note of Abbe ler Grand. 



fEliza Ruhamah Scidmore, "Adam's Second Eden," in National Geographic Magazine, 

 Vol. XXIII, No. 2, p. 206; February 1, 1912. 



JF. C. Valdez, "Six Years of a Traveller's Life in Western Africa," Vol. II, pp. 161 

 sqq. cited in J. S. Frazer's "The Dying God," London, 1912, p. 203. 



