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Four open questions in this atlas name Buddhist Studies as the discipline that could resolve them. Read closely, they are not four separate puzzles: two of the four turn out to be the same physical relic, asked about from two different angles, leaving two distinct tooth relics and one unrelated question about how a meditation tradition actually reached Tibet.

One Relic, Asked About Twice

One question asks whether the tooth enshrined at the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic in Kandy is an authentic physical tooth of Gautama Buddha, targeting the relic itself as an object. A second asks the identical question of the tooth relic held by Sri Dalada Maligawa, targeting the custodian institution that holds that same relic rather than the object. Both note that no independent scientific examination has ever been permitted, authenticity resting entirely on transmitted tradition, and both name the same remedy: non-destructive material analysis, such as micro-CT or isotopic testing, if the temple ever allowed an outside examination. A third question asks the same thing of a second, genuinely different relic, the tooth enshrined at the Lingguang Temple stupa in Beijing, with the identical answer: attribution rests on tradition, and the relic has not been independently examined.

A Fourth Question, About a Text Rather Than an Object

The fourth question is unrelated to any relic: whether Dzogchen's early transmission in Tibet draws on early Chan Buddhist teaching, or developed independently. The Nyingma tradition attributes Dzogchen's transmission to Padmasambhava and Vimalamitra in the eighth century, but the earliest securely datable Dzogchen texts are placed later by scholars, and the surviving Dunhuang manuscripts leave the relationship between early Dzogchen and Chan teaching in Tibet unresolved. What would resolve it is further codicological dating and textual comparison of the Dunhuang Dzogchen and Chan manuscripts against securely dated Chan sources, by scholars working directly with the manuscript corpus, work with no relationship at all to whether a tooth in a reliquary is or is not what tradition says it is.

Where To Read More

• Buddhist StudiesHumanitiesThe discipline itself, named by four open questions, two of which share one relic
• Sacred Tooth Relic of KandyBuddhist RelicsThe relic itself, targeted by one of the two shared-relic questions
• Is the tooth enshrined at the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic in Kandy an authentic physical tooth of Gautama Buddha?The open question itself, confirmed public
• Sri Dalada MaligawaTemplesThe custodian institution, targeted by the other of the two shared-relic questions
• Is the tooth relic held by Sri Dalada Maligawa an authentic physical tooth of Gautama Buddha?The open question itself, confirmed public
• Tooth Relic of Lingguang TempleBuddhist RelicsThe second, genuinely distinct relic in question
• Is the tooth relic enshrined at the Lingguang Temple stupa in Beijing an authentic physical tooth of Gautama Buddha?The open question itself, confirmed public
• DzogchenContemplative DisciplinesThe unrelated fourth question's own subject, a transmission question rather than a relic
• Does Dzogchen's early transmission in Tibet draw on early Chan Buddhist teaching, or did it develop independently?The open question itself, confirmed public