Sri Dalada Maligawa – 3D-Scanning and Documentation of the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic at Kandy, Sri Lanka

Abstract. Sri Dalada Maligawa – the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic – is one of the most important pilgrim sites in Buddhist culture. It is the main part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site Sacred City of Kandy. Since the end of the 17^th century the temple has been keeping the sacred tooth of the Buddha. Until now an accurate documentation of the temple with all its rich decorations is missing. The Temple is built in an area vulnerable to environmental factors like earthquakes or monsoon rains and was the target of terrorist attacks. To help preserving this important cultural heritage a research project was carried out. Main part of the project was a 3D-documentation of the entire temple by using Terrestrial-Laser-Scanning (TLS) and the creating of CAD-Plans. In addition to the documentation of the architecture several details were taken in high resolution by Structured-Light-Scanning (SLS). All data will be part of the digital archive of the temple and were used as a base for a general site monitoring, especially to observe cracks. Next to the mere documentation a transfer of knowledge was another aim of the project. In future most of the analysis of the scan data can be done by local specialists.