The Excerpts 29: About Bodh Gaya and Bodhi Tree
Bodh Gaya
This small town, the site of the Buddha's enlightenment, is in the northern
Indian state of Bihar. At the Buddha's time the town was named Uruvela,
but subsequently came to be known as either Sambodhi, Bodhimanda or more
usually as Mahabodhi. The name Bodh Gaya is of recent origin, dating from
about the 18th century. King Asoka is credited with building the first
temple at Bodh Gaya in the 2nd century BC. In either the 4th or 5th century
the present Mahabodhi temple was built replace it. The site of a great
monastic university, Bodh Gaya was the premier centre for the study of
the early Buddhist schools in India for 700 years. Its most famous and
enduring institution was the huge monastery built by the King of Sri Lanka
in the 4th century which continued to function right up to the 13th century.
Bodh Gaya became ery early and remains even today the most important place
of Buddhist pilgrimage. When it was abandoned in the 14th century its temples,
shrines and monasteries fell into ruin and only began to be revived from
the beginning of this century. Today most Buddhist countries have temples
there and the place is visited by thousands of pilgrims and tourists every
year.
Bodhi Tree
The name given to the tree at Bodh Gaya under which the Buddha sat on the
night he attained enlightenment. The tree itself was a type of fig with
the botanical name Ficus religiosa. In the centuries after the Buddha,
the Bodhi tree became a symbol of the Buddha's presence and an object of
worship. King Asoka's daughter, the nun Sanghamitta, took a cutting of
the tree to Sri Lanka where it still grows in the island's ancient capital
of Anaradapura.
The original at Bodh Gaya was destroyed by King Puspyamitra during his
persecution of Buddhism in the 2nd century BC and the tree planted to replace
it, probably an offspring, was destroyed by King Sassanka at the beginning
of the 7th century AD. The tree that grows at Bodh Gaya today was planted
in 1881 by a British archaeologist after the previous one had died of old
age a few years before. Many temples throughout the Buddhist world have
Bodhi trees growing in them which are or are believed to be offspring of
the one from Anaradapura and their worship forms an important part of popular
Buddhist piety.
B.M. Barua, Gaya and
Bodh Gaya. Calcutta, Vol. I,
1931, Vol II, 1934.
S. Dhammika, Navel of the
Earth. Singapore, 1996.