difficult for them to repress their mirth. I stood amont; a num- 
ber of coffee-planters, not more than five yards from the relic, thus 
having as good an opportunit)- of inspecting it as I could wish for 
under the circumstances. No one — not even the Prince — was 
allowed to touch the tooth, or to approach it ver\' close. The 
worth)' Buddha must have had a wonderful set of teeth when he 
was among the living. The specimen here represented was at 
least fixe inches long, and was, of course, no human tooth at all, 
but the side tusk of a pig, — probably a wild boar. — somewhat 
yellow and discolored from age, like Siberian ivory. That the 
priests should have had the courage, or rather impudence, to 
bamboozle the benighted people with an ordinary pig's tusk, by 
representing it as a part of Buddha's masticating apparatus, and 
thus lead them by the nose for more than two thou.sand years. 
•sc th;i 
from the true cross, tears which Christ wept, pieces of Jacob's 
ladder, and, in one Ba\ arian cloister,-' actually a bottle full of that 
darkness which came o\er Egypt (an ordinary brandy-flask, 
smoked inside with lamp-black), are exhibited and worshipped 
b}- superstitious and degraded multitudes. 
Xow with regard to this tooth of Buddha. 1 ha\ e my own 
special theor>^ I do believe that a real, human tooth, — and pos- 
sibl\- of Buddha, who. there can be very little doubt, was an his- 
torical chararcter, — once existed in that temple, but became lost. 
In the •• Mahawanso, " the great historical record of the Singhalese, 
u e read that the Tamils of the Malabar coast of India, about 
three hundred years before our era, made war upon the Singhalese, 
raxaged the island, and carried the tooth in triumph to India. 
But the Singhalese, burning for revenge, equipped a fleet, and a 
few \ears later invaded the Tamil country, never resting till they 
had recoxered the [)recious masticator and brought it back to the 
temple at Kandx". This is stated to have actually happened 
twice, for the tooth was held in great esteem on account of its 
