In Bodh Gaya, a fig tree marks the place where Siddhartha Gautama became the Buddha. Its story travels to Sri Lanka and back.
Some two and a half thousand years ago, a wandering prince named Siddhartha Gautama sat down beneath a fig tree near the river Niranjana and resolved not to rise until he understood the cause of suffering. When he rose, he was the Buddha — the awakened one. The tree became the Bodhi Tree, the tree of awakening, and the village became Bodh Gaya.
A tree with a long journey
In the third century BCE, the emperor Ashoka built a shrine at the site. Tradition holds that his daughter, Sanghamitta, carried a sapling of the tree to Sri Lanka, where it was planted at Anuradhapura and still grows. The tree that stands in Bodh Gaya today is believed to descend, through cuttings, from that same lineage — a pilgrimage of a tree, returning home.
Beside it rises the Mahabodhi Temple, a brick tower whose present form dates largely from the fifth and sixth centuries CE. Under the tree lies the Vajrasana, the diamond throne, marking the place where the Buddha sat.
“Monks from Thailand, Tibet, Japan and Sri Lanka sit side by side in the same courtyard. It may be the most quietly international place in India.”
If you go
Come at dawn, when monks begin their circumambulations and the chanting starts, or at dusk, when butter lamps are lit. Around the town, Buddhist nations have built their own monasteries, each in its own style — a walk between them is a short tour of Asia.
About this story
Written for the WanderMate Journal by our team in Varanasi, where we plan and run journeys along the Ganga. We check facts against official and published sources, listed below, and revise guides when timings, prices or dates change.
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