Sri Lanka’s most sacred elephant passed away at the age of 68 on Monday, prompting an outpouring of mourning and a presidential order to have the massive body stuffed and preserved for posterity.
Nadungamuwa Raja was the most significant of 100 elephants charged with carrying a golden casket of Buddhist treasures on its back in an annual procession with fire-eaters and drummers.
On Monday, a parade of mourning, including students, priests in saffron robes, and an old lady in a Zimmer frame, paid their respects to Raja, praying and reverently caressing its mighty tusks. The animal was proclaimed a ‘national treasure’ by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who also ordered that its remains be kept ‘for future generations to witness’.
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Raja, decked up in lights, carried the relics casket at the annual Esala Perahera pageant, a popular tourist attraction in the centre city of Kandy, most years from 2006 to 2021. The elephant was escorted by an armed guard of special commandos after a near-miss with a motorbike in 2015 while on a trip to attend a temple ritual.
Between 1953 and 1986, one of Raja’s forefathers, also called Raja, carried the golden box containing 34 artefacts for precisely 34 years. When the elder Raja died in 1988, at the age of 72, there was an outpouring of sadness, prompting the government to establish a national day of mourning. Within Kandy’s Temple of the Tooth compound, which contains a purported tooth of the Buddha, the earlier Raja was also preserved and has its own museum.
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