The Geographical Dictionary of Ancient and Mediaeval India c5.s3.21

c5.s3.21

Dantapura—The ancient capital of Kaliṅga (*Dāṭhadhātuvamsa*, Turnour's *Account of the Tooth-relic in Ceylon*—*JASB.*, 1837, p. 860). According to some writers, it is the same as Puri (Jagannātha) in Orissa, which, they say, was the place where Buddha's tooth was kept and afterwards removed to Ceylon. The left canine tooth of Buddha is said to have been brought and enshrined by Brahmadatta, King of Kaliṅga, shortly after the death of the former. According to the *Dāṭhāvamsa*, the tooth was taken from the funeral pile of Buddha by Khema, one of his disciples, who gave it to Brahmadatta, and was kept and worshipped in a temple at Dantapura for many generations. The tooth was taken to Pāṭaliputra in the fourth century A. D., by Guhasiva, king of Kaliṅga. The tooth is said to have worked many miracles at Pāṭaliputra to confound the Nigranthis or Jainas at whose instigation it was ordered to be taken there. Rājā Pāṇḍu got the tooth from Dantapura (*JASB.*, 1837, pp. 868, 1059.) It was brought back to Dantapura by king Guhasiva and placed in its old temple. After the death of Guhasiva in battle with the nephews of Khiradhūra, a northern king, who had attacked Dantapura for plundering the tooth, it was removed to Ceylon by his daughter Hemamālā and her husband Danta kumāra, a prince of Ujjain and sister's son of Guhasiva, in the reign of Kīttiśrī Meghavarṇa (A. D. 298-326) who guarded the relic at Anurādhāpura: see Anurādhāpura (Tennent's *Ceylon*; Turnour's *Tooth-relic of Ceylon*; *Dāṭhāvamsa* translated by Mutu Coomara Swami; and Turnour's *Dāṭhadhātuvamsa* in *JASB.*, 1837, p. 866). It is now kept at Kandy Śrīvardhanapura in the Maligawa temple. For the procession of the tooth-relic at Kandy see *Mahāvamsa*, ch. 85. It has been variously identified with Danton in the district of Midnapore and with Rājmahendri on the Godāvarī. But it is now settled that the ancient Dantapura is Puri in Orissa and this identification is confirmed by the tradition that after Kṛiṣṇa was killed by Jarā, his bones were collected and kept in a box till king Indradyumna was directed by Viṣṇu "to form the image of Jagannātha and put into its belly these bones of Kṛiṣṇa" (Garrett's *Classical Dictionary of India* under *Jagannātha*; Ward's *History of the Hindoos*, I, 206).