The Temple of the Tooth, in the morning light of Kandy. Built in the early 18th century as a royal palace for Vira Narendra Sinha, the last Sinhalese king, it was converted into a temple to house the Tooth Relic of the Buddha. The moat and the octagonal Paththirippuwa pavilion were added in 1802 by Sri Vickrama Rajasingha, the last king of Kandy. Designed by the royal architect, Devendra Moolacharya, the pavilion’s eight points were meant to radiate from the king as he displayed the Tooth Relic to the crowds below, reinforcing his position at the centre of the world. The name Paththirippuwa comes from the Tamil words, parthu (meaning ‘to see’) and irippu (to be ‘seated’), and together sound like ‘to sit and see’, and many take this as evidence that Tamil was in fact the lingua franca of the Lankan aristocracy. After the British seized Kandy in 1815, the Paththirippuwa was converted into an oriental library, and thus it remains today, housing the temple’s collection of Buddhist palm leaf manuscripts and books. Shot for the New York Times in December 2018.
A thammettama drummer plays during a musical ceremony on the lower floor of the temple’s main shrine. The twin thammettama are traditional Sri Lankan drums, played with curved sticks called kadippuwa, in Sinhalese. Hewisi is a form of religious music once reserved for use by Kandyan royal decree. Today, hewisi is still used almost exclusively in Buddhist ceremonies, and is seen as an offering in itself.Shot on assignment for The New York Times in December 2018.
The moment everyone jammed into the Weda Sitina Maligawa has been waiting for; the ivory-inlaid door to the inner sanctum is opened during the Dawal Nawape Poojawa to reveal the Sacred Tooth Relic; what is believed to be the left upper canine of the Buddha, enshrined in a golden mini-stupa.Shot on assignment for The New York Times. Continue reading “The Moment of Truth”→
Sri Lanka’s great river, the Mahaweli, borders the Royal Botanical Gardens, in Peradeniya, on three sides, enclosing it in a broad watery loop; southeast of Kandy. Shot on assignment for The New York Times. Award-winning travel writer Lucas Peterson’s piece, “An Island Nation that is Best Savored Slowly“, ran in the Frugal Traveler column on 30th January 2019.
As the clock counts down to 9.30am, tardy devotees anxiously queue to enter the Weda Hitana Maligawa — the upper shrine room — of the Temple of the Tooth, in Kandy, for the “Dawal Nawape Poojawa”, a Hindu-style “tewawa”, or service ritual, conducted by Buddhist monks and laymen. These ceremonies are conducted thrice daily, during which the Tooth Relic — believed to be a tooth of the Buddha — is revealed to the public, and are well attended. Shot on assignment for The New York Times; specifically for Frugal Traveler columnist Lucas Peterson’s story, “An Island Nation that is Best Savored Slowly”, which ran on 30th January 2019.
Son of the Morning Light 