But the singular result of this bigotry was not to destroy one sacred tooth but to create two.  The king of Pegu, who wished to marry a Sinhalese princess, sent an embassy to Ceylon to arrange the match.  They were received by the king of Cotta, who bore the curiously combined name of Don Juan Dharmapala.  He had no daughter of his own but palmed off the daughter of a chamberlain.  At the same time he informed the king of Pegu that the tooth destroyed at Goa was not the real relic and that this still remained in his possession.  Bayin Naung was induced to marry the lady and received the tooth with appropriate ceremonies.  But when the king of Kandy heard of these doings, he apprized the king of Pegu of the double trick that had been played on him.  He offered him his own daughter, a veritable princess, in marriage and as her dowry the true tooth which, he said, was neither that destroyed at Goa nor yet that sent to Pegu, but one in his own possession.  Bayin Naung received the Kandyan embassy politely but rejected its proposals, thinking no doubt that it would be awkward to declare the first tooth spurious after it had been solemnly installed as a sacred relic.  The second tooth therefore remained in Kandy and appears to be that now venerated there.  When Vimala Dharma re-established the original line of kings, about 1592, it was accepted as authentic.

As to its authenticity, it appears to be beyond doubt that it is a piece of discoloured bone about two inches long, which could never have been the tooth of an ordinary human being, so that even the faithful can only contend that the Buddha was of superhuman stature.  Whether it is the relic which was venerated in Ceylon before the arrival of the Portuguese is a more difficult question, for it may be argued with equal plausibility that the Sinhalese had good reasons for hiding the real tooth and good reasons for duplicating it.  The strongest argument against the authenticity of the relic destroyed by the Portuguese is that it was found in Jaffna, which had long been a Tamil town, whereas there is no reason to believe that the real tooth was at this time in Tamil custody.  But, although the native literature always speaks of it as unique, the Sinhalese appear to have produced replicas more than once, for we hear of such being sent to Burma and China.[72] Again, the offer to ransom the tooth came not from Ceylon but from the king of Pegu, who, as the sequel shows, was gullible in such matters:  the Portuguese clearly thought that they had acquired a relic of primary importance; on any hypothesis one of the kings of Ceylon must have deceived the king of Pegu, and finally Vimala Dharma had the strongest political reasons for accepting as genuine the relic kept at Kandy, since the possession of the true tooth went far to substantiate a Sinhalese monarch’s right to the throne.