John S. Strong is the Charles A. Dana Emeritus Professor of Religious Studies at Bates College. He is the author of several books, including Relics of the Buddha and Buddhisms: An Introduction.
摘要
Bodily relics such as hairs, teeth, fingernails, pieces of bone—supposedly from the Buddha himself—have long served as objects of veneration for many Buddhists. Unsurprisingly, when Western colonial powers subjugated populations in South Asia, they used, manipulated, redefined, and even destroyed these objects to exert control. In The Buddha’s Tooth, John S. Strong examines Western stories, from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, surrounding two significant Sri Lankan sacred objects to illuminate and concretize colonial attitudes toward Asian religions. First, he analyzes a tale about the Portuguese capture and public destruction, in the mid-sixteenth century, of a tooth later identified as a relic of the Buddha. Second, he switches gears to look at the nineteenth-century saga of British dealings with another tooth relic of the Buddha—the famous Daḷadā enshrined in a temple in Kandy—from 1815, when it was taken over by English forces, to 1954, when it was visited by Queen Elizabeth II. As Strong reveals, the stories of both the Portuguese tooth and the Kandyan tooth reflect nascent and developing Western understandings of Buddhism, realizations of the cosmopolitan nature of the tooth, and tensions between secular and religious interests.
目次
Preface and Acknowledgments Note on Usage Introduction Part I : The Portuguese and the Tooth Relic 1. The Tale of the Portuguese Tooth and Its Sources 2. Where the Tooth Was Found: Traditions about the Location of the Relic in Sri Lanka 3. Whose Tooth Was It? Traditions about the Identity of the Relic 4. The Trial of the Tooth 5. The Destruction of the Tooth Conspectus of Part One: The Storical Evolution of the Tales of the Portuguese Tooth Part II: The British and the Tooth Relic 6. The Cosmopolitan Tooth: The Relic in Kandy before the British Became Aware of It 7. The British Takeover of 1815 and the Kandyan Convention 8. The Relic Returns: The Tooth and Its Properties Restored to the Temple 9. The Relic Lost and Recaptured: The Tooth and the Rebellion of 1817–1818 10. The Relic Disestablished: Missionary Oppositions to the Tooth 11. Showings of the Tooth: The Story of the King of Siam’s Visit (1897) 12. Showings of the Tooth: The Story of Queen Elizabeth’s Shoes (1954) Summary and Conclusion References Index
