Mahabodhi Temple at Bodh Gaya: Site of the Buddha's Awakening

The Mahabodhi Temple at Bodh Gaya in Bihar, India, marks the place where Siddhartha Gautama is believed to have attained enlightenment and become the Buddha. The emperor Ashoka built the first shrine here in the 3rd century BC, and the present brick temple dates mainly from the 5th or 6th century AD. It is the holiest site in the Buddhist world and one of the earliest surviving brick temples in India.

The place of awakening

According to Buddhist tradition, the Buddha came to the banks of the Niranjana River, near the village of Uruvela, after years of ascetic practice. He sat beneath a fig tree, resolved not to rise until he had found release from suffering, and attained enlightenment. The date is uncertain: many modern historians place it in the late 6th or 5th century BC.

The tree became known as the Bodhi tree, the “tree of awakening”, and the spot where he sat as the Vajrasana, or diamond throne. The site was soon visited by followers and became one of the four great places of pilgrimage, together with Lumbini, Sarnath and Kushinagar.

Ashoka’s shrine

The Maurya emperor Ashoka records in Rock Edict VIII that he set out for Sambodhi, meaning the place of enlightenment, in the tenth year after his consecration, around 260 BC. Buddhist tradition says he built a shrine beside the Bodhi tree. A polished sandstone slab at the site, carved with geometric and plant motifs, is identified as the Vajrasana placed there in Maurya times.

An early image of the shrine survives on a relief from the Bharhut stupa, dating to around the 2nd or early 1st century BC. It shows an open pavilion built around a tree, rather than a tall tower, which suggests what the early sanctuary looked like.

During the following centuries a stone railing was built around the sacred area. Its oldest sandstone posts, carved with lotus medallions and scenes such as the sun god in a chariot, are usually dated to around the 1st century BC. Later sections of granite date from the Gupta period.

The present temple

The temple seen today was built in the 5th or 6th century AD, broadly in the late Gupta period, on the site of earlier structures. It consists of a tall, straight-sided pyramidal tower of brick covered in plaster, rising to about 50–55 metres from a square base. Four smaller towers stand at the corners, a design that influenced later Buddhist temples across Asia.

The sanctum houses a large gilded image of the Buddha seated in the “earth-touching” gesture, recalling the moment he called the earth to witness his enlightenment. Behind the temple, on its western side, grows the Bodhi tree, with the Vajrasana between tree and temple wall.

Around the temple are hundreds of votive stupas of different periods and several sacred spots linked to the weeks after the enlightenment. These include the jewelled walkway where the Buddha is said to have walked in meditation, and the lotus pond.

Pilgrims through the centuries

From an early date Bodh Gaya drew visitors from far beyond India. Chinese sources record that in the 4th century AD King Meghavarna of Sri Lanka sent envoys to the Gupta emperor Samudragupta to request permission to build a monastery at Bodh Gaya for Sri Lankan pilgrims. The resulting monastery grew into a large institution, and Sri Lankan monks remained closely associated with the site for centuries.

Inscriptions in Chinese, Burmese and other languages found at Bodh Gaya show that pilgrims and donors came from across Asia during the following centuries. The temple’s design itself travelled: a version of the Mahabodhi Temple was built at Bagan in Myanmar in the 13th century, and other copies were raised later in Thailand, Nepal and Tibet.

Chinese pilgrims and decline

Chinese pilgrims left valuable descriptions of the site. Faxian visited around AD 400 during his pilgrimage to India, and Xuanzang came in the 630s, describing a tall brick temple decorated with niches holding golden images, surrounded by many monasteries.

Kings from Sri Lanka and Myanmar supported the site over the centuries. A Burmese mission repaired the temple in the late 11th century. After the decline of Buddhism in northern India from the 12th and 13th centuries, the temple came under the care of a Hindu monastic establishment and slowly fell into disrepair, though pilgrims from abroad continued to come.

Restoration

In the 1870s a mission sent by King Mindon of Burma began repairs. The British authorities then took over, and between about 1880 and 1884 the temple was extensively restored under the direction of Alexander Cunningham, with J. D. Beglar supervising the work, following an earlier survey of the site published by the scholar Rajendralal Mitra in 1878. The tower’s present appearance is largely the result of this restoration.

The Bodhi tree had also suffered. The tree standing in the 19th century was old and decaying, and after it fell, a new tree was planted in 1881 near the same spot. Buddhists regard the present tree as a descendant of the original.

Ownership and the modern era

In 1891 the Sri Lankan Buddhist reformer Anagarika Dharmapala founded the Maha Bodhi Society to return the temple to Buddhist management. A long legal and public dispute followed with the Hindu monastic owners. The Bodh Gaya Temple Act of 1949 created a management committee of Hindu and Buddhist members, chaired by the local district magistrate.

Bodh Gaya has since become an international pilgrimage town, with monasteries built by Buddhist communities from Thailand, Japan, Tibet, Bhutan, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and other countries. In 2002 the temple complex was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. In July 2013 a series of small bomb blasts in the complex injured several people, and security was tightened afterwards.

Myths and facts

Myth: Ashoka built the temple that stands today. Ashoka’s shrine was a much simpler structure. The present tower dates from about seven or eight centuries later and owes much of its current form to the restoration of the 1880s.

Myth: the Bodhi tree is the very tree the Buddha sat under. The original tree has not survived. Trees on the site have died or been destroyed and replanted several times, and the present tree was planted in the 19th century. Its lineage is a matter of tradition rather than documented proof.

Myth: Bodh Gaya has always been an exclusively Buddhist site. For several centuries the temple was owned by a Hindu monastic establishment, and Hindus also revere the Buddha as an incarnation of Vishnu. The shared management created in 1949 reflects this layered history.

Timeline

• Late 6th or 5th century BC: The Buddha’s enlightenment at Bodh Gaya, according to tradition.
• c. 260 BC: Ashoka visits the site and, according to tradition, builds the first shrine.
• c. 1st century BC: Earliest parts of the stone railing are carved.
• 5th–6th century AD: The present brick temple is built.
• 630s: The Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang describes the temple.
• c. 1880–1884: Major restoration under Alexander Cunningham’s direction.
• 1891: Anagarika Dharmapala founds the Maha Bodhi Society.
• 1949: The Bodh Gaya Temple Act sets up joint Hindu–Buddhist management.
• 2002: The Mahabodhi Temple Complex becomes a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Why it matters

The Mahabodhi Temple preserves the setting of the event at the heart of Buddhism. Its long history, from Ashoka’s shrine to Gupta builders, Burmese patrons and modern restorers, makes it a monument to more than two thousand years of devotion shared across Asia.