latry and superstition are
inherent, it may no longer be the perfection of doctrine that was
espoused by Prince Gautama.

Sir Edwin Arnold, who thoroughly knew most Eastern religions, admired
enthusiastically the precepts of Buddha, and no one can read his
writings without experiencing some regard for the Buddhism of
literature. In "The Light of Asia" the five commandments of the great
religion of the Orient are thus poetically recited:

Kill not--for Pity's sake--and lest ye slay
The meanest thing upon its upward way.

Give freely and receive, but take from none
By greed, or force or fraud, what is his own.

Bear not false witness, slander not, nor lie;
Truth is the speech of inward purity.

Shun drugs and drinks which work the wit abuse;
Clear minds, clean bodies, need no Soma juice.

Touch not thy neighbor's wife, neither commit
Sins of the flesh unlawful and unfit.

Whether present-day Buddhism is the exact religion taught by the
princely priest, and gracefully described by the English poet, matters
little--its fountainhead is Kandy, and temple and dependencies of the
sacred bone form the Vatican of the faith. This miraculous tooth,
alleged to be the left eye-tooth of Gautama Buddha, and taken from the
ashes of his funeral pyre twenty-five hundred years ago, has played a
mighty part in Eastern intrigue, and wars between nations have been
fought over it. For centuries it was the priceless marriage dower going
with certain favored princesses of royal blood. It was brought from
India to Ceylon in the fourth century after Christ. The Malabars
secured it by conquest more than once, the Portuguese had it for a time
at Goa, and for safety it was brought to Kandy in the sixteenth century,
and it has there since been cared for with scrupulous fidelity.

A relic supported by so much history should at least be genuine--the
history may be all right, but the tooth is a shambling hoax, at best a
crude proxy for the molar of Gautama. Intelligent priests of Buddhism
must know this, but the millions of common people finding solace in the
faith have never heard the truth--and wouldn't believe it if they did.
No more amazing display of faith over a reputed sacred relic is known
than is associated with this bogus tooth of Kandy.

Reference to any library of unimpeachable works on the world's religions
proves conclusively that the actual tooth was burned by the Catholic
archbishop of G