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Ch. 9: Narwhal Horns and Walrus Tusks

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HORNS AND TUSKS
315
If we are willing to accept the statement of the Portuguese, Captain Joâo Ribeyro in his "History of Ceylon" written in 1685, and presented to the King of Portugal,* the vene­rated tooth of Buddha, so jealously preserved in the Island of Ceylon, was the tooth of an ape. Constantine of Braganza seized it in 1560 and in his religious zeal preferred rather to have it burned and the ashes scattered over the sea than to accept the 800,000 francs offered as redemption by the King of Pegu. However, the Cinghalese priests proved equal to the emergency, and spread the report that the sacred tooth had, by its own miraculous virtue, escaped from the hands of the Portuguese, and had passed through the air until it finally found a resting place on a rose; here it was duly found by faithful Buddhists and replaced in its shrine. What purports to be a tooth of Buddha is to be seen here at the present day, although irreverent unbelievers insist that this tooth, which is 3 in. long, is in reality a shaped piece of ivory.f
The veneration of the supposed tooth of the Buddha in India finds a kind of parallel in the honour bestowed upon the teeth of the reigning sovereigns of Cassange, in Angola, Africa. When one of these kings or jagas dies, one of his teeth is drawn from his jaw and reverently placed in a box which contains a tooth of each of his predecessors. This tooth-shrine is considered the most precious of the crown treasures, and its ownership serves to legitimize each of the successive kings of Cassange.J
Many superstitions exist as to the teeth and teething, one of them being that when the teeth are slow in cutting
*J. Ribeyro, "Histoire de l'Isle de Ceylon," French transi, by Abbé le Grand, Amster­dam, 1701, pp. 118, 119; note of Abbé le Grand.
fEliza Ruhamah Scidmore, "Adam's Second Eden," in National Geographic Magazine, Vol. XXIII, No. 2, p. 206; February 1, 1912.
JF. C. Valdez, "Six Years of a Traveller's Life in Western Africa," Vol. II, pp. 161 sqq. cited in J. S. Frazer's "The Dying God," London, 1912, p. 203.
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