The tooth is now preserved in a temple at Kandy.  The visitor looking through a screen of bars can see on a silver table a large jewelled case shaped like a bell.  Flowers scattered on the floor or piled on other tables fill the chamber with their heavy perfume.  Inside the bell are six other bells of diminishing size, the innermost of which covers a golden lotus containing the sacred tooth.  But it is only on rare occasions that the outer caskets are removed.  Worshippers as a rule have to content themselves with offering flowers[73] and bowing but I was informed that the priests celebrate puja daily before the relic.  The ceremony comprises the consecration and distribution of rice and is interesting as connecting the veneration of the tooth with the ritual observed in Hindu temples.  But we must return to the general history of Buddhism in Ceylon.

3

The kings who ruled in the fifth century were devout Buddhists and builders of viharas but the most important event of this period, not merely for the island but for the whole Buddhist church in the south, was the literary activity of Buddhaghosa who is said to have resided in Ceylon during the reign of Mahanama.  The chief authorities for his life are a passage in the continuation of the Mahavamsa[74] and the Buddhaghosuppatti, a late Burmese text of about 1550, which, while adding many anecdotes, appears not to come from an independent source.[75] The gist of their account is that he was born in a Brahman family near Gaya and early obtained renown as a disputant.  He was converted to Buddhism by a monk named Revata and began to write theological treatises.[76] Revata observing his intention to compose a commentary on the Pitakas, told him that only the text (palimattam) of the scriptures was to be found in India, not the ancient commentaries, but that the Sinhalese commentaries were genuine, having been composed in that language by Mahinda.  He therefore bade Buddhaghosa repair to Ceylon and translate these Sinhalese works into the idiom of Magadha, by which Pali must be meant.  Buddhaghosa took this advice and there is no reason to distrust the statement of the Mahavamsa that he arrived in the reign of Mahanama, who ruled according to Geiger from 458 to 480, though the usual reckoning places him about fifty years earlier.  The fact that Fa-Hsien, who visited Ceylon about 412, does not mention Buddhaghosa is in favour of Geiger’s chronology.[77]

He first studied in the Mahavihara and eventually requested permission to translate the Sinhalese commentaries.  To prove his competence for the task he composed the celebrated Visuddhi-magga, and, this being considered satisfactory, he took up his residence in the Ganthakara Vihara and proceeded to the work of translation.  When it was finished he returned to India or according to the Talaing tradition to Thaton.  The Buddhaghosuppatti adds two stories of which the truth and meaning are equally doubtful.  They are that Buddhaghosa burnt the works written by Mahinda and that his knowledge of Sanskrit was called in question but triumphantly proved.  Can there be here any allusion to a Sanskrit canon supported by the opponents of the Mahavihara?