The Antiquities of Orissa v2.c17.s1.146

v2.c17.s1.146

**[ 105 ] Buddhism in Orissa.** It has been already shown in the preceding chapter that the northern part of Puri, including Bhuvanes'vara, Dhauli and Khanḍagiri, was thoroughly Buddhist during the 4th, the 3rd and the 2nd centuries before the Christian era. The edicts of As'oka at Dhauli cannot be accounted for on any other supposition, and many brief references in Buddhist annals support this view to a great extent. It is said that on the death of Buddha, one part of his relics, the left lower eye-tooth, was assigned to the then king of Kaliṅga, who preserved it with great care, and exhibited it to the faithful on all grand ceremonial occasions. The locale of its preservation might at first thought be presumed to have been the metropolis, the Kaliṅga-nagari of the Udayagiri inscriptions. The Sinhalese Buddhist annals, however, call the place Dantapura; but where that town was situated has not yet been satisfactorily determined. Mr. Fergusson thinks 'there can be little doubt but that the temple' (of Jagannātha at Puri) 'now occupies the site where formerly stood the *dagoba* containing the celebrated tooth-relic,⁸ and, in support of this conjecture, adds, 'certain it is that there is no other spot in the neighbourhood where any trace of it can be found; and a *dagoba* is such a solid mass of materials, that, except in the neighbourhood of a large city, it would be difficult to obliterate all traces of it; and the mass of materials, or earth, that it would take to fill up the terrace on which the temple stands, looks very like such an accumulation, and very unlike any work of the twelfth century where nothing of the kind was ever attempted that I know of. Almost all writers mention the tradition of a relic being contained in the image itself; some call it a bone, some say that is only a piece of the old image, which is periodically renewed; but, whatever it is, the idea of any relic is so totally foreign to the whole system of Hinduism, and so essentially a part of Buddhism, that I cannot but think it strongly confirmatory of this view of the case. If it is a bone, it probably pretends to be the tooth-relic that plays so important a part in Indian history'.⁹ The arguments are founded mainly on the mound on which the temple stands, and, if it could be shown that the Dantapura of the legend must be Puri, they would doubtless be of some weight, though the fact of a sand-ridge being present on a sandy shore abounding in sand-ridges would by no means be convincing. This objection apart, before this assumption can be accepted, it is necessary to see what the Buddhist annals say about Dantapura.