No. 60. — 1908.] couto : history of ceylon. 



191 



and arranging his companies in the form they had hitherto had, 

 he entered the city, which was a large one, and found it aban- 

 doned, because its inhabitants had retired to the neighbouring 

 villages, and so our people were left masters of it, and of the 

 Elephants' Quay, where was the greater part of their artillery, 

 and of various things that our soldiers found there. And 

 from one pagode, their principal one, they brought to the 

 viceroy an enchased tooth, which was commonly called that 

 of an ape, which was held amongst all those heathens as the 

 most sacred object of all those of their worship 1 : of which 

 the viceroy was immediately advised, and they assured him 

 that it was the greatest treasure that he could have got, because 

 they must needs give him a large sum of gold for it. 



Those heathens had it that this tooth was that of their 

 Budao (who is that great saint of theirs, of whom we have 

 already given an account in other Decades when we spoke of 

 the fo)tprint on Adam's Peak and of the population of Pegu 2 ). 

 In his legend they relate that this Budao after he had been 

 to Ceilao went to the regions of Pegu, and through all those 

 kingdoms, converting the heathers and working miracles ; 

 and that when he wished to die, he wrenched from his mouth 

 that tooth, and sent it to Ceilao as a very great relic of his. 

 And thus it was considered so great among them, and among 

 all the heathenry of the kingdoms of Pegu, that there was 

 nothing that they valued more highly : so much so, that 

 Dom Joao of Cota finding himself in need fabricated a false 

 tooth, and set it in gold, and ordered to be made for it a very 

 costly charola?, in which he put it, and sent it carefully 



1 This is one of the most puzzling incidents in Ceylon history. If this 

 was really the daladd, how came it to be in a Hindu temple in Jaffna ? 

 Was it among the " treasures " that Tribuli Pandar ( Vidiye Raja) 

 carried with him when he fled from Mundakondapola ? (See p. 176.) 

 If so, how did he come by it ? In the Mahdvansa xci. 17-9 we read of 

 Parakrama Bahu VI.'s making caskets for the tooth relic circa 1420 ; 

 and the relic is not mentioned again until after 1592, when we are told 

 (xciv. 11-4) that Vimala Dharma Surya (Dom Joao) having heard 

 that the tooth was preserved in Delgamuwa (how and when did it get 

 there ?) brought it to Kandy and built a relic-house for it. See on the 

 subject Ten. ii. 29-30, 198-9; J. Gerson da Cunha's Memoir on the 

 History of the Tooth Relic of Ceylon 40 ff. ; Pyr. ii. 145, n. The earliest 

 writer that records the capture of the daladd by the Portuguese is Lin- 

 schoten (i. 292-4) ; but his account is full of errors, the most noteworthy 

 being that the relic was dug up from the basement of a cloister on 

 Adam's Peak ! 



2 See pp. 108, 112-4. 

 ;i See p. 245, note 3 . 



