goUNESCO:1: Mahabodhi Temple Complex, Gaya
May 3, 2012
A wedding visit to Patna gave us the best excuse to go visit the Mahabodhi temple complex in Gaya, Bihar.
About 125 Kms from Patna (but a good 3-4hr bumpy car ride), one needs to travel through all the ravages of Laloo-land and check out whatever the new Nitish govermnet could salvage to reach Gaya. The entrance gate to Bodh Gaya promises to transport you to a heavnly new land and indeed it does! Metaled roads, clean side walks, tourists & pilgrims of a hundred nationalities or more and Buddhist temples & Pagodas of every conceivable oriental architecture. After the horrendous drive from Patna, this is indeed heavenly & new!
The Mahabodhi Temple in Bodhgaya marks the place where Siddhārtha Gautama sat under a Bodhi tree for 49 days of meditation. Not content with having just attained enlightenment, the Buddha then spent a week in front of the tree, gazing with unblinking eyes in gratitude.
We were there in winter and thankfully very few tourists. Most of the crowd around the temple were calm & serious monks who probably lived in Gaya for a long time. The temple itself is a wonderful almost monolith tower. It is believed that Ashoka the great built the first temple at the site of the Mahabodhi tree about 250 years after Buddha attained enlightenment. Later in the 5th century Kushan king renovated the temple complex and brought it to its current size. The original railings and tower material from this period are now housed in the museum. After the decline of Buddhism in India the temple fell into ruins buried in sand and soil.
It was only in the 19th century that the father of Archeological restorations in India and founder of ASI, Sir Alexander Cunningham renovated the entire complex and what all of us see today is largely as a result of his efforts. During the initial years Sir Cunningham had to station security guards around the area to ensure that locals who had little value for a buddhist relic come and loot the site! (A bit of side trivia, Sir Alexander Cunningham's younger brother was Francis Cunningham who was an officer in the Madras Army and after whom the Cunningham road in Bangalore is named after!)
The Maha Bodhi tree also has a story of its own. The original tree under which the Buddha gained enlightenment fell during the years of ruin of the temple complex. A sapling from the original tree that fell off was taken to Pataliputra to Ashoka's court. Later it was placed on a ship and sent to Jambuloka (present day Sri Lanka) across the sea. Ashoka's daughter Sanghamitra planted it in Anuraddhapura. This was in 288 BC and is the oldest verified specimen of a flowering plant. Years later a sapling from this descendant was brought back to Bodh Gaya. The current tree is the 7th generation Maha Bodhi tree.
It is quite a feeling to sit in front of the this very tree and imagine that a man sat under it 2500 years ago to understand the very meaning of our lives! The man came as a prince & left as the enlightened Buddha.
Around the main temple complex lie a maze of other Buddhist temples & Pagodas built by various buddhist countries. The one by Thai & Burmese people is the most striking one. Visitors can spend the whole day walking around these temples including a huge 80ft status of the Buddha. For eating and sleeping one can imagine similar kind of options that are found in Hampi or in Pondicherry, wierd village shacks making the very best Italian & French food!
A trip to Bodh Gaya can be clubbed with short day trip to the legendary Nalanda university ruins & the hot springs of Rajgir. Nalanda is the first greatest university in recorded history and flourished during the Gupta empire. It definetly was the first residential university ever in the world. Almost 2000 years ago close to 10000 students from various parts of the world came to Nalanda to learn various arts from the 2000 best teachers of its time. The ruins remain now and one can still make out the hostel blocks, the rooms with beds, plumbing work and even a Hindu temple.
Bihar is often neglected part of the country, economically backward & tourstically uninteresting, but the state was home to some of the greatest events that shaped this country including the 1st time that India as we know today geographically was united under one banner with a capital at Pataliputra more than 2500 years ago. Go visit Bihar!...and say with pride "I am a Bihari" :P
About 125 Kms from Patna (but a good 3-4hr bumpy car ride), one needs to travel through all the ravages of Laloo-land and check out whatever the new Nitish govermnet could salvage to reach Gaya. The entrance gate to Bodh Gaya promises to transport you to a heavnly new land and indeed it does! Metaled roads, clean side walks, tourists & pilgrims of a hundred nationalities or more and Buddhist temples & Pagodas of every conceivable oriental architecture. After the horrendous drive from Patna, this is indeed heavenly & new!
The Mahabodhi Temple in Bodhgaya marks the place where Siddhārtha Gautama sat under a Bodhi tree for 49 days of meditation. Not content with having just attained enlightenment, the Buddha then spent a week in front of the tree, gazing with unblinking eyes in gratitude.
We were there in winter and thankfully very few tourists. Most of the crowd around the temple were calm & serious monks who probably lived in Gaya for a long time. The temple itself is a wonderful almost monolith tower. It is believed that Ashoka the great built the first temple at the site of the Mahabodhi tree about 250 years after Buddha attained enlightenment. Later in the 5th century Kushan king renovated the temple complex and brought it to its current size. The original railings and tower material from this period are now housed in the museum. After the decline of Buddhism in India the temple fell into ruins buried in sand and soil.
It was only in the 19th century that the father of Archeological restorations in India and founder of ASI, Sir Alexander Cunningham renovated the entire complex and what all of us see today is largely as a result of his efforts. During the initial years Sir Cunningham had to station security guards around the area to ensure that locals who had little value for a buddhist relic come and loot the site! (A bit of side trivia, Sir Alexander Cunningham's younger brother was Francis Cunningham who was an officer in the Madras Army and after whom the Cunningham road in Bangalore is named after!)
The Maha Bodhi tree also has a story of its own. The original tree under which the Buddha gained enlightenment fell during the years of ruin of the temple complex. A sapling from the original tree that fell off was taken to Pataliputra to Ashoka's court. Later it was placed on a ship and sent to Jambuloka (present day Sri Lanka) across the sea. Ashoka's daughter Sanghamitra planted it in Anuraddhapura. This was in 288 BC and is the oldest verified specimen of a flowering plant. Years later a sapling from this descendant was brought back to Bodh Gaya. The current tree is the 7th generation Maha Bodhi tree.
Around the main temple complex lie a maze of other Buddhist temples & Pagodas built by various buddhist countries. The one by Thai & Burmese people is the most striking one. Visitors can spend the whole day walking around these temples including a huge 80ft status of the Buddha. For eating and sleeping one can imagine similar kind of options that are found in Hampi or in Pondicherry, wierd village shacks making the very best Italian & French food!
A trip to Bodh Gaya can be clubbed with short day trip to the legendary Nalanda university ruins & the hot springs of Rajgir. Nalanda is the first greatest university in recorded history and flourished during the Gupta empire. It definetly was the first residential university ever in the world. Almost 2000 years ago close to 10000 students from various parts of the world came to Nalanda to learn various arts from the 2000 best teachers of its time. The ruins remain now and one can still make out the hostel blocks, the rooms with beds, plumbing work and even a Hindu temple.
Bihar is often neglected part of the country, economically backward & tourstically uninteresting, but the state was home to some of the greatest events that shaped this country including the 1st time that India as we know today geographically was united under one banner with a capital at Pataliputra more than 2500 years ago. Go visit Bihar!...and say with pride "I am a Bihari" :P
Posted bySandeep Sekharamantri at 8:30 PM
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