Kandy, city, central Sri Lanka, capital of Central Province, on the Mahaweli River, in the Kandy Plateau. It is one of the island nation's largest cities and the economic focus of the tea-producing central highlands. Dalada Maligava (the Temple of the Tooth), repository of a sacred Buddhist relic said to be a tooth of the Buddha, is here, and the University of Peradeniya (1942) is nearby. Kandy was the capital of a Sinhalese kingdom from 1592 to 1815, when it became one of the last sections of the island to be annexed by the British as part of colonial Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). Population (1990 estimate) 104,000.
