what with the white streaked faces and limbs, and the clang of the
metal dresses; the surroundings, too, added to the weird, unearthly
effect, the dark moonless night, the dim masses of forest closing in
on the garden, and the uncertain flare of the resinous torches.

Amongst others invited to see the Devil Dancers was a French
traveller, a M. Des Etangs, a singularly cultivated man, who had just
made a tour of all the French possessions in India. M. Des Etangs was
full of curiosity about the so-called "Sacred Tooth" of Buddha, which
is enshrined in the "Temple of the Tooth," and makes Kandy a
peculiarly sacred place to the Buddhist world.

The temple, a small but very picturesque building, overhangs the lake,
and is surrounded by a moat, full of the fattest carp and tortoises I
ever saw. Every pilgrim to the shrine throws rice to these carp, and
the unfortunate fish have grown to such aldermanic amplitude of
outline that they can only just waddle, rather than swim, through the
water.

The Buddhist community must be of a most accommodating temperament.
The original tooth of Buddha was brought to Ceylon in A.D. 411. It was
captured about 1315 and taken to India, but was eventually restored to
Kandy. The Portuguese captured it again in 1560, burnt it, and ground
it to powder, but the resourceful Vikrama Bahu at once manufactured a
new tooth out of a piece of ivory, and the Buddhists readily accepted
this false tooth as a worthy successor to the real one, extended the
same veneration to it as they did to its predecessor, and, more
important than all, increased rather than diminished their offerings
to the "Temple of the Tooth."