Bodhi Tree

Siddhartha Gautama, the spiritual teacher who became known as the Buddha, is said to have attained enlightenment, or buddhahood, circa 500 BCE, under that tree.

Emperor Ashoka paid homage to the Bodhi Tree and held a festival every year in its honour in the month of Kattika.

The tree must have been renewed frequently, as the present Pipal is standing on a terrace at least 30 feet above the level of the surrounding country.

A sapling immediately sprouted forth, fifty cubits high, and in order to consecrate it, the Buddha spent one night under it in meditation.

King Ashoka's daughter Sanghamittā Theri brought a piece of the tree with her to Ceylon, where it continues to grow in the island's ancient capital of Anuradhapura.

[26][27] According to the Mahāvaṃsa, Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi was planted in 288 BCE, making it the oldest verified specimen of any angiosperm.

In 1913, Anagarika Dharmapala took a sapling of Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi to Hawaii, where he presented it to his benefactor, Mary E. Foster, who had funded much Buddhist missionary work.

[28] In 1950, Jinarajadasa took three saplings of the Sri Maha Bodhi to plant two in Chennai, India: one near the Buddhist temple at the Theosophical Society and the other at the riverside of Adyar Creek.

[29][30] In 1959, to mark a visit to Vietnam by the first president of India, Rajendra Prasad, a cutting of the original tree in Bodh Gaya was gifted, and it presently stands on the grounds of Trấn Quốc Pagoda in Hanoi.

[31] In 2012, the Bangladeshi philanthropist Brahmanda Pratap Barua took a sapling of the Bodhi Tree from Bodh Gaya, to Thousand Oaks, California, where he presented it to his benefactor, Anagarika Glenn Hughes, who had funded much Buddhist work and teaches Buddhism in the United States.

[32] In 1989, the government of India presented the temple of Nihon-ji with a sapling from the Bodhi Tree as a gesture of world peace.

A sapling of the Bodhi Tree from Anuradhapura was planted on 15 May 2011 at Wisdom Park in New Manila, Quezon City, Philippines, by D. M. Jayaratne, Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, and Mariano S. Yupitun, founder of Universal Wisdom Foundation Inc.[citation needed] A sapling of the Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi tree was sent in 2022 to the Great Stupa of Universal Compassion, the largest stupa in the Western world, near Bendigo in central Victoria, Australia.

The Mahabodhi tree at the Sri Mahabodhi Temple in Bodh Gaya
The Diamond throne , or Vajrashila , at the spot where the Buddha is said to have sat under the Bodhi Tree in Bodh Gaya
A Buddhist monk in front of the Mahabodhi tree
1810 picture of a small temple beneath the Mahabodhi tree , Bodh Gaya [ 9 ]
The Mahabodhi tree at Bodh Gaya in 2015
Illustration of the temple built by Asoka at Bodh Gaya around the Bodhi Tree. Sculpture of the Satavahana period at Sanchi , 1st century CE.
Bodhi Tree sign, 2013
Ashoka's Mahabodhi Temple and Diamond throne in Bodh Gaya, built circa 250 BCE. The inscription between the chaitya arches reads: "Bhagavato Sakamunino/ bodho", meaning "the building round the Bodhi tree of the Holy Sakamuni ". [ 24 ] Bharhut frieze (circa 100 BCE).
Sapling of the Maha bodhi tree planted in the year 1950 at the Theosophical Society Adyar