Burma's king offered a fortune for the Buddha's tooth, Goa's archbishop ground it to powder, and two new teeth appeared within six years

Buddhists in Sri Lanka and Burma venerate the dalada, a tooth of the Buddha. In 1560 Portuguese forces under the viceroy, Constantino de Bragança, attacked Jaffna. From the main temple they took a tooth set in gold and carried it to Goa. Bayinnaung, King of Pegu, sent envoys to ransom it. He offered at least 300,000 cruzados, perpetual friendship and unlimited rice for the Portuguese fort at Malacca. An 1873 account puts the offer at 400,000 cruzados. In spring 1561 Goa debated the offer. The viceroy wanted the money. The Archbishop, Dom Gaspar, preached that the tooth must not be ransomed for any amount. The church won. Before the Pegu envoys and a crowd, the tooth was ground in a mortar, burned in a brazier and its ashes thrown into the river. In 1566 a tooth appeared at Kotte with the claim that the Portuguese had taken a copy. It went to Pegu as part of a princess's dowry. A second tooth appeared at Kandy. The Kandy tooth is the one now kept at the Temple of the Tooth. On 25 January 1998 a suicide squad of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam drove a truck bomb at the temple and killed 13 people. Police said the relic was safe. It remains in Kandy.