Jumbo's Hide, Elvis's Ride, and the Tooth of Buddha Read online

  JUMBO’S HIDE,

  ELVIS’S RIDE,

  AND THE

  TOOTH OF BUDDHA

  More

  Marvelous

  Tales of

  Historical

  Artifacts

  JUMBOS HIDE,

  ELVIS’S RIDE,

  AND THE

  TOOTH OF BUDDHA

  HARVEY RACHLIN

  Garrett County Press

  Garrett County Press Digital for more information, please

  address:

  www.gcpress.com

  Cover design by Kevin Stone (kstonedesign.com)

  Copyright © 2000 by Harvey Rachlin

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 978-1-939430-09-0

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  THE TOOTH OF THE BUDDHA

  THE GOLD LARNAX OF KING PHILIP II

  THE MAGNA CARTA

  THE STONE OF SCONE

  THE ESSEX RING

  GALILEO’S MIDDLE FINGER

  GEORGE WASHINGTON’S SCHOOLBOY COPYBOOKS

  JOHN HARRISON’S FOURTH MARINE TIMEKEEPER

  THE VIRGINIA DECLARATION OF RIGHTS

  THE RISING SUN CHAIR

  THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE TREATY

  THE LEWIS AND CLARK JOURNALS

  BEETHOVEN’S EAR TRUMPETS

  HARRISON’S PEACE PIPES

  JOHN ADAMS’S PIGTAIL

  THE DOUBLEDAY BALL

  VENDOVI’S HEAD

  THE BATTLE SWORD OF COLONEL NAJERA

  CHARLES DICKENS’S PROMPT-COPY OF A CHRISTMAS CAROL

  THE FIRST AMERICAN FLAG RAISED IN JAPAN

  THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION

  SLICES OF TOM THUMB’S WEDDING CAKE

  THOMAS EDISON’S ORIGINAL TINFOIL PHONOGRAPH

  JESSE JAMES’S STICKPIN

  ULYSSES S. GRANT’S SMOKING STAND

  JUMBO THE ELEPHANT

  FREUD’S COUCH

  THE HOOF OF FIRE HORSE NUMBER TWELVE

  “TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALL GAME”

  MARK TWAIN’S ORCHESTRELLE

  THE ZIMMERMANN TELEGRAM

  THE FOURTEEN POINTS

  THE TRUCE FLAG THAT ENDED WORLD WAR I

  WYATT EARP’S DRAWING OF THE O.K. CORRAL GUNFIGHT

  THE MALTESE FALCON

  MONTY’S BATTLE CARAVANS

  THE WORLD WAR II JAPANESE SURRENDER TABLE

  ENIAC

  MARILYN MONROE’S BILLOWING DRESS FROM THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH

  ELVIS PRESLEY’S PURPLE CADILLAC

  ABLE THE SPACE MONKEY

  ODYSSEY

  THE GUN THAT KILLED JOHN LENNON

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  SOURCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

  SEARCH WORDS

  ILLUSTRATION CREDITS

  INTRODUCTION

  From our lifetime of reading and learning, we may wonder what great artifacts of history have survived the ages. The annals of human experience are filled with objects that figured prominently or obliquely in manifold triumphs and calamities, and we may imagine a vast catalog of these objects spread around the earth, reposing in locations anywhere from obscure mountain hideaways to great metropolitan museums, testifying to natural disasters, wars, feats of heroism, tragedies, explorations, crimes, inventions, artistic creations, religious ceremonies, affairs of state, weddings, celebrations, and uncounted other events of record. We may be curious about whether objects ranging from the biblical Noah’s Ark and Ark of the Covenant to later items such as the three caravels in which Christopher Columbus and his men sailed to the New World in 1492 and James Hargreaves’s original spinning jenny still exist, and if so, where they are today.

  My own insatiable desire to seek out these treasures—and the stories behind them—led me to write my first book on the subject, Lucy’s Bones, Sacred Stones, and Einstein’s Brain. I continue in this volume with a new collection of stories based on actual objects that exist today, which I hope will intrigue and inspire you, as they have me, to contemplate their role in shaping civilization and what they ultimately tell us about ourselves.

  It is not difficult to wax romantic about artifacts. They are the props of history, portals to the past that afford the beholder a glimpse back in time. They offer edifying excursions that reveal as much as the eye—and imagination—is willing to see. Not only do they evoke insight into a particular era or event, but they carry the imprint of the individuals associated with them.

  For many, artifacts associated with legendary figures of the past offer the greatest thrill. If you see or touch an object that was beheld by Newton, Washington, Lincoln, or Darwin, for example, you have formed a common bond with that icon of human history. Observe the Rosetta Stone at the British Museum, and you and Napoleon, centuries apart, have both examined the same object, and perhaps experienced the same awe.

  It is terrifically interesting to research existing artifacts and discover their underlying history, which is not always apparent at first. It is like reaching into the drawers of history and rummaging through them. Sifting through a plethora of historical riches, I have pulled out a number of items that fascinated me, and which I thought readers would likewise find absorbing.

  Why do we have such an avid interest in history? Clearly, history enables us to learn from the mistakes of our ancestors so we are not condemned to repeat them, and understanding the themes that animated past eras illuminates the present. But perhaps there is something more.

  History is important, I believe, for identity and perspective. Not having knowledge of our roots would be like going through life with amnesia; history provides us with the emotional context of where we came from and how we came to be who we are. History also gives us the intellectual perspective to guide our own journey through life. It lets us know where we’re going in relation to where our predecessors have been. Without that identity and perspective, we are aimless wanderers.

  Not only is the future carved out of the past, but we ourselves are the direct result of history. Each of us is a product of the deeds, machinations, habits, policies, discoveries, humanitarian efforts, religious commitments, and much more, of all past peoples from peasants and slaves to nobles and kings, all trying to establish themselves securely in their worlds.

  In our human ancestral chain, if but one link, just one person, had been different—no matter how far back—we might never have been born! Now, that is truly amazing, considering the countless factors that drew our ancestors together to meet and mate exactly as they did to produce the genetic sequence that led eventually to ourselves. You—every one of us—came into this world against truly incalculable odds: not just those of one individual sperm among 300 million winning the competition for a single egg in your unique conception, but of billions upon trillions of events and actions and decisions of the past that in precise concert resulted in the remarkable occasion of your birth. In one sense, your being here to read these words is vanishingly, stupefyingly unlikely. Paradoxically, in another and far deeper sense, it is inevitable.

  I hope this book will be a voyage of discovery for the reader. Some of the artifacts may be familiar, but there is always more to learn about them, always the opportunity to move beyond the familiar and be surprised by history. Perhaps some readers may be inspired to undertake their own quests after objects of special interest. But one shouldn’t be disappointed to find that some objects that played a major role in an important event of history do not survive. Alas, Columbus’s 1492 fleet—the Niña, Pinta, and Santa María—and James Hargreaves’s original spinning jenny no longer exist; and despite some claims to the contrary, to the best of scholars’ knowledge, neither do Noah’s
Ark or the Ark of the Covenant.

  So feast your mind on the tales of the trials and victories of humankind that yielded the artifacts we may see, touch, and savor for their rich historical value today. From the Magna Carta to the Emancipation Proclamation, from John Harrison’s fourth marine timekeeper to ENIAC, from a horse’s hoof to a tablecloth fragment, a pigtail to a smoking stand, they are all part of the stuff of history—the stuff of which you yourself are made.

  JUMBO’S HIDE,

  ELVIS’S RIDE,

  AND THE

  TOOTH OF BUDDHA

  THE TOOTH OF THE BUDDHA

  DATE: circa 483 B.C.E.

  WHAT IT IS: A tooth venerated by Buddhists, said to have come from Gautama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism; according to tradition, the relic has demonstrated supernatural powers.

  WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE: The tooth is white and brownish and is encased in seven gold and silver caskets. Larger than an ordinary tooth, it is about the size of the first digit of a pinky, or about one inch.

  Seven days after life ceased to exist in the Buddha, flames engulfed his body, reducing it to a pile of seed-like ashes—save for seven body parts that miraculously retained their entire original form: the forehead bone, two collarbones, and four front teeth. The Buddha, it was said, had used his psychic powers to bequeath these relics to his followers because he wanted them to understand the impermanent nature of life.* After devoting his adult life to giving humanity the dharma, his teachings on how to lead a righteous and correct life, it was for him a way to guide his followers after his physical death.

  The Buddha’s bodily relics, tradition holds, went to different destinations over time. One, the sacred tooth, performed miracles as it was passed down from king to king, and has over the ages been revered by Buddhists as a holy object.

  Buddhism is a religion based not on worship of a deity but on wisdom of the self, and it is rich and complex in its history, traditions, and teachings on such issues as natural law, worldly matters, human problems, mindfulness, actions (karma), discipline, ethics, psychology, metaphysics, truths, and re-becoming, or existence after death. It was founded by Siddhartha Gautama, who, after six years of searching as an ascetic for an end to suffering, discovered a philosophy that delivers adherents from evil and guides them to perfect wisdom and pure living. Gautama became known as the Buddha, or Enlightened One.

  Siddhartha Gautama was born to a royal family in Lumbini Park at Kapilavatthu on the Indian border of present-day Nepal around 563 B.C.E. A sage told his father, King Suddhodana, that if the prince were exposed to the sufferings of the common people, he would not succeed his father as king but would rather embrace a life of asceticism and devote himself assiduously to teaching religion. Fearing the prediction, the king secluded his son and tried to keep him ignorant of the misfortunes and woes of others.

  But after Prince Siddhartha married as a young man, trips to the local village exposed him to suffering, old age, sickness, and death. On another trip he met a religious man who inspired him to seek a solution to people’s problems. A compassionate person, Siddhartha pondered how he could bring happiness to humankind. His ruminations were fruitless, and he decided to devote his life to this goal. Renouncing his royal station, he became a hermit.

  During the Portuguese invasion of Sri Lanka in the early sixteenth century, King Vimaladharmasurya I offered his palace in Kandy to safeguard the Buddha's tooth. The sacred tooth, which had been taken from a Buddhist temple in the town of Ratnapura and hidden in various places so it wouldn't be seized or destroyed by the invaders, has ever since remained in the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic.

  Siddhartha sought out all the major religious teachers in India—there were sixty-two prominent religions in the country then—and asked what solution they had to the problems of suffering and unhappiness. These teachers imparted their wisdom to Siddhartha, who saw two kinds of extremism in their views. One was to mortify the self—that is, to lead a humble life by giving up comforts and avoiding everything that gave pleasure. The other was to revel in gratification of the senses.

  Siddhartha didn’t believe a person had to go to either of these extremes to find happiness, so he searched for a solution somewhere in between self-mortification and hedonism. Eventually he had the profound insight that the reason for unhappiness is craving or desire, and that fulfilling desires causes even greater unhappiness because the satisfaction never lasts. If people could extinguish or eradicate their cravings, Gautama Buddha realized, there would be no unhappiness. To this end he formulated the four Noble Truths: life is suffering; the cause of suffering is desire; the remedy for suffering is the extinction of desire; the way to extinguish desire is to follow the Noble Eightfold Path: right understanding, right purpose, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.

  Gautama Buddha’s dharma, or philosophical teaching, was designed to help people find happiness. It preached that people should not do evil deeds but good deeds, practice morality and discipline, and develop knowledge, or wisdom. To control one’s mind, or keep it clean from unwholesome thoughts, was vital. Buddha said there were three kinds of unwholesomeness: craving, which includes greed or desire of any kind; anger or resentment; and delusion, or not having an understanding of how things really are.

  Gautama urged Buddhists to follow five precepts: not to kill any living thing; not to steal; not to commit adultery or engage in any kind of sexual misconduct; not to lie, slander, utter obscenities, or engage in frivolous talk; and not to take any kind of intoxicants. The Buddha taught that people should rather practice loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity. Buddhists must always try to maintain these four states of mind, which is to say that they must always be mindful, or aware, of their thoughts, words, and activities.

  The Buddha passed away in his eightieth year, about 483 B.C.E.* Ten months before his death, he traveled from city to city in India, stopping only at night to help people or to preach to them. At the end of his journey he settled in the northern Indian city of Kusinara (later called Kushinagar). A blacksmith prepared a meal for the Buddha in his house, and after eating it, the Buddha told the blacksmith that in the evening he was going to die. After the meal the Buddha was struck by a stomach pain, and he left for the place where he would die—the Sala garden of King Mallas. In this garden he asked the attendant monk to give him water, then urged all the monks to go meditate and not to be disheartened by his death. The Buddha opened his eyes and attained the four mental ecstasies, or absorptions (jhanas), then passed away and attained nirvana.

  The tooth of the Buddha, known as the Sacred Tooth Relic, is enshrined in a valuable golden casket. The threshold and door frame of the casket chamber are covered with silver and gold. The sacred relic is located inside the seventh casket.

  Many people attended the Buddha’s cremation a week later in King Mallas’s Sala garden in Kusinara. According to tradition, the remains of the Buddha were unusual. The ashes were like lentil seeds, and seven bones and teeth remained unchanged, according to the Buddha’s determination. Eight powerful princes, all related to the Buddha, came to the cremation, each deeply desiring the Buddha’s ashes. They quarreled among themselves vociferously about who was closer to the Buddha and therefore rightfully entitled to the ashes, and it seemed the clashes would soon become physical.

  A Brahmin named Drona who had been a teacher to all the princes heard about the dispute and interceded, saying that arguing would lead only to bitter quarreling and bloodshed, and that the Lord Buddha would disapprove of it. Drona told the princes that he would distribute the ashes to them, and that as a teacher he would be impartial. With a measuring bowl he divided the seed-like ashes in an equitable manner among the eight princes, who then built shrines for the ashes in their own kingdoms for people to venerate.

  The Buddha’s forehead bone, two collarbones, and four front teeth were more sacred than the ashes and dispersed to different locations. The thr
ee bones were taken by arahants, the foremost disciples of Buddha, and eventually were enshrined in separate monuments. The forehead bone went to a shrine called Seruvila Cetiya in the Trincomalee district in northeastern Sri Lanka. Of the two collarbones, the right one was put in the Thuparama shrine in Anuradhapura, the ancient capital of Sri Lanka; and the other was sent to the shrine of Selacetiya Mihintale, near Anuradhapura in north-central Sri Lanka.

  Of the four teeth, one, according to tradition, was hidden by the Brahmin Drona in a lock of his hair under his turban, and was in turn taken by Sakra, the king of devas (divine beings), to heaven, where it was enshrined. Another tooth was taken to Nágaloka, described in Buddhist literature as a heavenly place that is under the ground. A third tooth was given to a Sri Lankan king and later enshrined at Somávati Cetiya, near Polonnaruva.

  The fourth tooth was taken by a saintly monk, Arahant Khema. It has a long earthly heritage, traveling to many different shrines over time, and has been continually venerated by Buddhists.

  Many stories of miracles are associated with this relic. For instance, there was once a non-Buddhist king who doubted the power of the relic and pummeled it on an iron anvil with a sledgehammer in an attempt to crush it. The tooth did not crush but instead embedded itself inside the anvil, where it could not be touched. The king then announced he would grant a reward to anybody who could take it out. Many people came from all over to try to extract the Buddha’s tooth relic from the anvil, but no one was successful. Then one day a grandson of the wealthy Buddhist Anatha Pindika, who had lived at the time of the Buddha, came and knelt before the anvil. Reverently, he said, “Lord, please come out and show your miraculous power to the people who do not believe in the Buddha.” And indeed the tooth came out from the anvil and soared to the sky, where it emitted a colorful rainbow. The grandson of the Buddhist follower then placed a lotus in the palm of his hand and asked the relic to come down from the sky. The tooth sailed down and rested on the lotus, which the man held above his head as he walked to the temple. This event was witnessed by thousands of people who cheered and shouted enthusiastically. The king also witnessed the miracle, and, surrendering to the power of the relic, bowed down to it. In a different time another king did not believe in the miracles of the Buddha’s relic and threw it into a muddy body of water. Suddenly, out of the water rose a lotus upon which the tooth, completely dry, rested. The king henceforth became a believer in the tooth of the Buddha. The relic has many miraculous stories like these associated with it.