Not one, but two. Two wonderful clients in the past month have talked to us here at KANDY Outdoor Flooring about Kandy, Sri Lanka.

The first was a Vancouver client who emailed us while he was on a trip. “Hey, are you guys connected to Kandy Sri Lanka?”

It was the first we’d heard of a city named after our outdoor flooring company, and we’re thrilled .

Next it was a Toronto client. A wonderful, petite, South Asian woman who – about an hour into our meeting – mentioned the city, its cultural and religious significance, and its beauty. She told us Kandy rests in the mountainous and thickly forested interior of the island of Sri Lanka. And of course, she told us about the Temple of the Tooth.

Turns out Kandy, Sri Lanka is a pretty important place in the Buddhist religion. Did you know that Buddha – the Buddha – is at rest in a temple in Kandy? At least part of him is. You see, we’ve now learned that when Buddha died more than two millennia ago, in BC 534, his body was burnt on a sandalwood pyre in India. Once the fire died down, a tooth was discovered in the ashes. A left upper canine. This tooth became a very important symbol, conferring all kinds of power and influence on the holder of the tooth. In fact the belief was that the holder of the tooth had a divine right to rule.

(You can imagine there was fighting, lots of it, but we don’t like fighting so we are just gonna gloss right over that part of the story.)

For centuries – really, more than two millennia – this tooth has been enshrined in special temples built specifically to protect the religious icon. And so it is that The Temple of the Tooth is currently in Kandy.

There are all kinds of other interesting things we discovered about Kandy. The Kingdom of Kandy was an independent monarchy between the late 15^th and early 19^th centuries. It is a Unesco World Heritage Site. About 110,000 people live there now amid tea plantations, tea factories – oh and it is where the world famous Ceylon tea was developed!

But it’s this Temple of the Tooth we’re most enamoured with. It’s built of sculpted wood, ivory, limestone and marble… and, well, we think all it needs now is some KANDY Outdoor Flooring around those outdoor terraces (if it doesn’t have outdoor terraces, perhaps it should J). We know the tooth remnant and the spirit of Buddha would be oh-so-very-happy to be surrounded by The Sweet Treat For Your Feet^TM, don’t you?