The
bodhisattva, having renounced the luxurious life of Prince
Siddhartha, now as Gautama the ascetic, walked in a
south-easterly direction from Kapilavastu and came to
Vaishali. Here he listened briefly to the teaching of Arada
Kalapa, an aberrant samkhya, but left dissatisfied. Crossing
the river Ganges he once again entered the kingdom of
Magadha and came to Rajgir, the capital, where he listened
to the yogic teachings of Rudraka. Again dissatisfied, he
left followed by the five ascetics. Together with them he
came to the village of Uravilva on the banks of the
Nairanjana river, which is close to the place now known as
Bodhgaya. Here they engaged in long, austere practices. For
the first two years Gautama ate but one grain of rice a day,
and for the next four years he ate nothing at all. He
remained sitting in continual meditation despite the almost
complete degeneration of his body.
Six years after his initial renunciation he realized that
extreme mortification does not yield liberation. He arose
and broke the austerities. The five ascetics were disgusted
and departed to Benares.
As
his former garments had perished, he took a yellow shroud
from the corpse of a servant girl awaiting cremation nearby.
To help him wash it, the god Indra struck the ground and
produced a pond. A local Brahmin's daughter, Sujata,
approached and offered him a golden bowl filled with rice
prepared in the essence of the milk of one thousand cows.
Renewed in body and mind, his complexion brilliant as the
luster of burnished gold, the bodhisattva bathed and then
walked to a nearby cave to continue his meditation. However,
the earth shook and the voices of previous Buddha's resounded
in the air, telling him that this was not the place of his
enlightenment and advising him to proceed to the nearby
bodhi tree. The sites of all these events were seen by the
Chinese pilgrims in the fifth and seventh centuries, and
they record that stupas had been constructed at each. None
of these exist today.
As he walked to the tree the grain cutter Swastika gave him a
bundle of kusha grass. A flock of birds flew around the
bodhisattva three times. When he entered the area about the
tree, the earth shook. He made himself a seat from the kusha
grass on the eastern side of the tree and after seven
circumambulations sat down facing the east. He made the
great resolve not to rise again until enlightenment had been
attained, even if his skin, bones and flesh should crumble
away. Sending forth a beam of light from the hair-treasure
between his eye-brows, he invoked Mara, who came to
challenge him. Mara dispatched first his horrible armies and
next his enticing daughters, but the bodhisattva remained
unmoved and defeated him, calling upon the earth and her
goddess as his witness. He continued in profound meditation
through the three watches of the night and finally realized
supreme enlightenment at dawn. The air filled with flowers
and light, and the earth trembled seven times.
For seven days the Buddha continued to meditate beneath the
tree without stirring from his seat and for six weeks more
remained in the vicinity. During the second week he walked
up and down, lotus flowers springing from his footsteps, and
pondered whether or not to teach. This was later represented
by the chankramanar jewel walk, a low platform adorned with
eighteen lotuses, which now runs close and parallel to the
north side of the Mahabodhi Temple. For another week he sat
gratefully contemplating the bodhi tree; this spot was later
marked by the animeshalochana stupa, now situated to the
north of the chankramanar. Brahma and Indra offered a hall
made of the seven precious substances, in which the Buddha
sat for a week radiating lights of five colours from his
body to illuminate the bodhi tree. Hsuan Chwang describes
this site as being west of the tree and remarks that in time
the precious substances had changed to stone. However,
ratnaghara is now identified by some as a roofless shrine
again north of chankramanar.
During
a week of unusually inclement weather, the naga king
Muchalinda wrapped his body seven times about the meditating
Buddha, protecting him from the rain, wind and insects.
Hsuan Chwang saw a small temple next to the tank, thought to
be this naga's abode. He described it as being somewhat
southeast of the bodhi tree and it is now identified with
the dry pond in Mucherim village near Bodhgaya.
While the Buddha sat meditating beneath the ajapala nigrodha
tree, Brahma came and requested him to teach the Dharma.
Hsuan Chwang saw this tree with a small temple and stupa
beside it at the southeast corner of the bodhi tree
enclosure. It is thought that the site is now within the
Mahanta's graveyard near the present eastern gate.
Buddha spent the last of the seven weeks seated beneath the
tarayana tree. Hsuan Chwang placed some distance south
and east of the bodhi tree enclosure, near the places where
the bodhisattva earlier had bathed and eaten Sujata's
offering. All were marked by stupas. Here two passing
merchants, Trapusha and Bhallika, offered the Buddha the
first food since his enlightenment. Seeing that he needed a
vessel to receive it, the four guardians of the directions
each offered precious bowls, but he would only accept one of
stone from each. He pressed the four bowls together to form
one, which survived, and when Fa Hien saw it in Peshawar
four rims could be seen in the one.
After thus spending forty-nine days meditating close to the
seat of enlightenment, the Buddha left Bodhgaya on foot to
meet the five ascetics at Benares in order to turn the first
wheel of Dharma. This accomplished, he returned briefly to
Uruvela and introduced the three brothers - Uruvela, Gaya
and Nadi Kasyapa - to his teachings. They developed faith in
the Buddha and, together with a thousand of their followers,
became monks and accompanied Shakyamuni to Rajgir.
Thus far we have described Bodhgaya only in connection with
Shakyamuni Buddha, but that connection is in no way
exclusive. In the same manner as Shakyamuni, all the buddhas
who show enlightenment to this world eat a meal of milk
rice, sit upon a carpet of grass at Vajrasana, engage in
meditation, defeat Mara and his forces and attain supreme
enlightenment beneath the bodhi tree (although the species
of tree differs with each buddha).
The present bodhi tree is a descendant of the original, for
the tree has been destroyed deliberately on at least three
occasions. King Ashoka, initially hostile to Buddhism,
ordered it to be cut down and burned on the spot, but when
the tree sprang up anew from the flames his attitude was
transformed. In deep regret for his destruction, Ashoka
lavished so much personal care and attention on the new tree
that his queen became jealous and secretly had it destroyed
once more. Again Ashoka revived it and built a protective
enclosing wall, as had previously been done by King
Prasenajit of Koshala within the Buddha's lifetime. Later,
Nagarjuna is said to have built an enclosure to protect the
tree from damage by elephants and when in time this became
less effective, placed a statue of Mahakala upon each
pillar.
Records of the third destruction of the tree are given by
Hsuan Chwang, who reports seeing remains of these walls, and
states that in the sixth century a king of Bengal by
the name of Shasanka destroyed the tree. However, even
though he dug deep into its roots, he was unable to unearth
it completely. It was afterwards revived by Purvavarma of
Magadha, who poured the milk of one thousand cows upon it,
causing it to sprout again and grow ten feet in a single
night.
In addition to human destruction, the tree has perhaps
perished naturally several times, yet the pipal is renowned
for growing wherever its seeds fall and the direct lineage
has continued. General Cunningham offers an example. After
showing severe decay for more than a decade, the remains of
the old tree fell over during a storm one night in 1876.
Young sprouts were already growing within the old tree
(which grew into the one we see today).
The origins of the Mahabodhi Temple, which adorns the site
today, are shrouded in obscurity. Various traditions hold
that Ashoka erected a diamond throne shrine, which seems to
have been a canopy supported by four pillars over a stone
representation of Vajrasana. When General Cunningham was
restoring the floor of the present temple he found traces
that he took to be the remains of the shrine. It is his
opinion that the temple may have been built between the
fifth and seventh centuries, but this would seem to be based
on Hsuan Chwang's detailed description of it, while Fa Hien
mentions it not at all. Others propose that because of its
resemblance to similar structures in Ghandhara, Nalanda and
so forth, as well as other archaeological evidence, its
founding could have been as early as the second century AD—
Nagarjuna is reputed to have built the original stupa upon
the roof, which is more consistent with the latter theory.
However, from Hsuan Chwang we can be certain that the temple
existed before the seventh century.
Accounts of the builder are no longer clear. Some legends
attest that he was a brahmin acting on the advice of Shiva.
The statue in the main shrine of the temple, famous for its
likeness to Shakyamuni, is said to have been the work of
Maitreya in the appearance of a brahmin artisan.
Monastic tradition seems to have been strong in Bodhgaya. Fa
Hien mentions three monasteries and Hsuan Chwang describes
particularly the magnificent Mahabodhi Sangharama, founded
early in the fourth century by a king of Ceylon. Both
pilgrims make special remark of the strict observance of the
Vinaya by the monks residing there. Some accounts tell that
the great master Atisha, who later emphasized pure practice
of the Vinaya, received ordination in Bodhgaya.
As elsewhere, neglect and desolation followed the muslim
invasion of northern India. However, extensive repairs and
restoration of the temple and environs in the fourteenth
century by the Burmese and their further attempts in the
early nineteenth century are recorded. In the late sixteenth
century a wandering sanyasi settled in Bodhgaya and founded
the establishment which is now the math of the Mahanta. When
in 1891 Anagarika Dharmapala, inspired by appeals in the
press by Sir Edwin Arnold, began the Mahabodhi Society and
sought to restore the site as a buddhist shrine, he was
obstructed by bureaucracy. The British Government of India
decided that the temple and its surroundings were the
property of the saivite Mahanta, who only then began to take
an interest in it. Nearly sixty years of judicial wrangling
followed until the Mahabodhi Temple was legally recognized
as belonging to buddhists.
Since the inception of the Bodhgaya Temple Management
Committee and the beginning of its active administration in
1953, vast improvements have been made to both the temple
and its grounds. Existing structures have been repaired and
new stupas are being erected. With the reintroduction of
gilded images in the niches of the Mahabodhi Temple, it
begins to regain some of the splendour described by Hsuan
Chwang.
The establishment, in the surrounding district, of beautiful
temples and monasteries by the people of Tibet, Japan,
China, Thailand, Burma and others has brought back to
Bodhgaya the varied traditions of buddhist practice that
have evolved in those lands. By contrast, the headless,
mutilated statues in the local museum present a disturbing
reminder of past destruction.
Pilgrims abound in Bodhgaya and in recent years thousands
have had the fortune to listen to the Dharma there. Many
buddhist masters are again travelling to Bodhgaya to turn
the wheel of Dharma. For example, the Kalachakra empowerment
given by His Holiness the Dalai Lama in 1974 was attended by
over 1,00,000 devotees. The Tibetan monastery now offers a
two-month meditation course annually for the international buddhist community, and meditation courses and teachings are
given occasionally in the Burmese, Thai, Japanese and other
temples.
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