Kandy Esala Perahera

The relic of the kings

The temple in Kandy keeps what it describes as the left canine tooth of the Buddha. According to the temple, it was brought to Sri Lanka from the kingdom of Kalinga in 310 AD by Princess Hemamala and Prince Dantha, during the reign of King Kithsirimewan, who honoured it with a procession so splendid that it became an annual event, held in the hope of timely rain and a good harvest. Whoever held the relic was seen as the true ruler: through the kingdoms of Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa, Kotte and finally Kandy, the Dalada Perahera showed who was its guardian. When the British took the Kandyan kingdom in 1815, custody passed to the Buddhist monastic order, and a lay chief custodian, the Diyawadana Nilame, has organised the procession ever since.

The festival today is thought to combine two processions: the Esala Perahera, a ritual asking the gods for rain, and the Dalada Perahera for the relic. Four shrines, the devales of the guardian gods Natha, Vishnu and Kataragama and of the goddess Pattini, take part. Their festival opens with the kap situveema, when a sanctified young jackfruit tree is cut and planted at each shrine, followed by five nights of processions within the shrine grounds. The official astrologer sets the auspicious times for every stage, and the firing of cannon, heard across the city, marks the key moments.

Kumbal, Randoli and the water-cutting

Then the street processions begin: five nights of the Kumbal Perahera and five of the Randoli Perahera, named after the palanquins in which the queens of the Kandyan kings were carried. Whip-crackers and fire-ball acrobats go ahead to clear the way, followed by Buddhist flag bearers and the Peramuna Rala, the front official, on the first elephant. Behind come Kandyan drummers and dancers, more elephants, musicians and flag bearers, and a group of singers in white who announce the Maligawa tusker, carrying the sacred casket under a domed canopy. The Diyawadana Nilame walks behind it in ceremonial Kandyan dress. The processions of the four shrines follow, the Kataragama shrine with its kavadi peacock dance, and the Pattini shrine with the only female dancers in the Perahera.

The grand Randoli procession falls on the full moon of Nikini. In the early hours that follow, the casket is carried to the Asgiriya Gedige Vihara and the processions of the four shrines go to Getambe for the water-cutting ceremony, the diya kepeema, in the Mahaweli River. A day procession returns through Kandy that afternoon, and the Perahera ends when a letter announcing its successful conclusion, the Perahera Sandeshaya, is handed to the President. In 2026 the temple counted it as the 1,716th Perahera.