The Mahabodhi Temple at Bodh Gaya Has a 50 Metre Brick Tower From the 5th or 6th Century, Stands Over the Throne Where Buddhists Place the Enlightenment, and Has Been a UNESCO World Heritage Site Since 2002

The Mahabodhi Temple at Bodh Gaya (बोधगया) in Bihar is the place where Buddhist tradition holds that Siddhartha Gautama attained enlightenment and became the Buddha. UNESCO put the Mahabodhi Temple Complex on the World Heritage List in June 2002 under five criteria, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) and (vi), and calls its brick temple one of the earliest Buddhist temples built entirely in brick that still stands.

The tower is 50 metres high and dates from the 5th or 6th century CE, the late Gupta period. Emperor Ashoka built the first temple here in the 3rd century BCE, UNESCO says. Around it are a polished stone throne, a Bodhi tree, six more sacred spots and monasteries built by Buddhist countries. tuput has separate articles on Ashoka’s life, on Nalanda, the other World Heritage site in Bihar, and on the state as a whole, so this one stays with the temple.

What UNESCO inscribed in June 2002

The World Heritage Committee met in Budapest from 24 to 29 June 2002 and inscribed the complex as decision 26 COM 23.15. On UNESCO’s page the property covers 4.86 hectares, 115 km south of Patna and 16 km from the district town of Gaya.

The Committee gave a reason under each criterion. On (i), it cited the 50 m temple as one of the earliest temple constructions in the subcontinent. Early brick structures like it are few in India, and this one has influenced architecture over the centuries (ii). Records of the events of the Buddha’s life and of worship since Ashoka are exceptional here (iii). Late Gupta brickwork and carved stone balustrades are outstanding (iv). Finally, the complex has direct association with the Buddha, “being the place where He attained the supreme and perfect insight” (vi).

The tower, the throne and the tree

The temple faces east, UNESCO’s description says, with a curved tower topped by an amalaka (a ribbed stone disc) and a kalasha (a pot-shaped finial). Four small corner shrines hold statues of the Buddha. The sanctum holds a gilded seated Buddha, over five feet high, with a hand touching the ground to call the earth as witness. A hall above the sanctum is where senior monks meditate. The whole complex lies 5 metres below the surrounding land and is reached by a flight of steps.

Beside the temple is the Vajrasana (वज्रासन), the Diamond Throne, a platform of polished sandstone that UNESCO says Ashoka installed to mark the spot where the Buddha sat. West of the temple stands the Bodhi tree, which UNESCO calls a “supposed direct descendant” of the original. Cunningham recorded that the older tree, by then decayed, fell in a storm in 1876, and that young plants raised from its seeds were ready to replace it.

Seven weeks, seven places

Buddhist tradition holds that after the enlightenment the Buddha spent seven weeks near the tree, and the complex marks each. The nomination dossier India filed with UNESCO counts seven sacred spots, with the Bodhi tree as the first.

In the second week he is believed to have stood gazing at the tree, at the Animesh Lochana Chaitya (अनिमेष लोचन चैत्य), a shrine north of the central path. In the third he walked 18 paces back and forth along the Ratnachakrama, the Jewelled Ambulatory, where raised stone lotuses mark his steps. The temple committee uses the Pali name Cankamana for this path. The fourth week is placed at the Ratnaghar Chaitya, the fifth under the Ajapala Nigrodh tree, now marked by a pillar, and the seventh under the Rajyatana tree.

The sixth week is placed at the Muchalinda lake, the lotus pond outside the enclosure to the south. The dossier relates that Muchalinda, king of the nagas (serpent beings), sheltered the Buddha there from a storm.

Ashoka’s visit and the temple that stands today

The place had several names. In the Buddha’s time the forest was Uruvela (Uruvilva in Sanskrit), the dossier says, and by the 3rd century BCE it was called Sambodhi, meaning complete enlightenment. Ashoka’s Rock Edict VIII, in E. Hultzsch’s translation, says that when the king “had been anointed ten years, he went to Sambodhi.” Hultzsch identifies this with Bodh Gaya and adds that the Divyavadana, a Sanskrit Buddhist text, has Ashoka visiting with the elder Upagupta and giving 100,000 gold pieces. The dossier adds that the visit is carved in relief at Bharhut and on the east gateway of the Great Stupa at Sanchi.

Excavation at the site in 1880 and 1881, which Cunningham described, uncovered the remains of an Ashokan-era Vajrasana and a cloister walk with 22 pillar bases. Cunningham concluded that “the present Temple is built exactly over the remains of Asoka’s Temple.” The Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang, who visited in 637 CE according to the temple committee, described a brick vihara “about 160 or 170 feet high.” The committee says the surviving temple “retains the dimensions and broad features” of that time.

The date of the present building has been argued. Cunningham’s 1892 book put its origin around 140 CE, on the strength of a gold coin of the Indo-Scythian king Huvishka found among relics at the throne. UNESCO gives the 5th or 6th century, and the nomination dossier quotes K. K. Muhammed of the Archaeological Survey of India’s Patna circle placing it in the 6th century.

Sri Lanka’s chronicle ties the tree to Ashoka as well. The Mahavamsa, in Wilhelm Geiger’s translation, records that the thera Mahinda asked Ashoka to send the nun Sanghamitta and the south branch of the great Bodhi tree to Lanka.

Burmese repairs and the 1880s restoration

Cunningham read an inscription dated 1079 as the record of Burmese repairs in the 11th century. UNESCO places a long abandonment between the 13th and 18th centuries. The temple committee’s history says a Shaiva monk, Mahant Ghamandi Giri, settled at the site in 1590. Deputations of the Burmese king Mindon Min began a thorough renovation in 1874 with the Government of India’s permission, the committee’s history says, and it was completed in 1884 under Cunningham and J. D. Beglar.

In 1880 the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, Ashley Eden, appointed Beglar to repair the temple, and Cunningham visited and advised. The dossier gives 1880 to 1884 as the dates and Rs 200,000 as the cost. For the walls, Cunningham wrote, the work repeated the surviving niches and mouldings with no new features. The front pavilion and the four corner towers were different. Beglar designed them from a small stone model of the temple found in the ruins. Cunningham, who wrote that he had no part in that design, noted that it “has been much criticised” and judged it “legitimate and justifiable.” UNESCO’s assessment is that despite neglect and repairs the temple “has retained its essential features intact.”

A committee of four Buddhists and four Hindus

Sir Edwin Arnold appealed in 1885 for the temple to pass to Buddhists, and the Sri Lankan Buddhist leader Anagarika Dharmapala took up the cause in 1891, according to the temple committee. The Bodh Gaya Temple Act of 1949 set up the arrangement that followed. Under it the state nominates a chairman and eight members, all Indians: four Buddhists and four Hindus, including the Mahant. Gaya’s district magistrate is chairman, and the state must name a Hindu to chair while the magistrate is not a Hindu. Section 11 gives Hindus and Buddhists of every sect access for worship or pindadan, the Hindu offering of pindas. Section 15 lets the state form an advisory board with a Buddhist majority whose members need not be Indian.

The committee says Mahant Harihar Giri handed management over, to Vice President S. Radhakrishnan, on 23 May 1953. UNESCO records the complex as the property of the Bihar government, run by the committee with 85 regular staff, funded mainly by devotees’ donations, with conservation under the Archaeological Survey’s guidance. The inscription decision (26 COM 23.16) also recommended an overall management plan with regular monitoring, including the effect of tourism on the place’s religious and spiritual significance. According to the 2001 dossier, the advisory board drew members from Japan, Korea, Thailand, Bhutan, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Laos, Cambodia, Nepal and Sikkim.

A petition before the Supreme Court asks for a change in the law. On 4 August 2025, the Press Trust of India reported, the Court issued notice on a plea to repeal the Act and replace it with a central law, and tagged it with a pending plea.

Pilgrims and the monasteries around the temple

In 2001 the dossier estimated about 400,000 visitors a year at Bodh Gaya, 30 per cent of them foreigners, with 2,000 a day from November to February. It says 60,000 people attended Buddha Purnima in May 2000 and that the town had 14 monasteries.

The Ministry of Tourism told the Lok Sabha on 23 March 2026 that Bihar recorded 736,720 foreign and 65,463,304 domestic tourist visits in 2024. ETV Bharat reported on 28 November 2025, citing official data, that 1.12 lakh (112,000) of the foreign visitors went to Bodh Gaya. On its Incredible India site, the Ministry lists temples and monasteries built by China, Japan, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Thailand, Taiwan, Korea, Bhutan and Nepal. It describes a 25 m (82 ft) Buddha statue at the Japanese temple and the Monlam Chenmo prayers each winter, often led by the Dalai Lama. The temple committee’s own list includes the Burmese Vihara, the Bangladesh Buddhist Monastery and the Maha Bodhi Society of India.

A convention centre at Bodh Gaya, sanctioned in 2016-17 under the Swadesh Darshan scheme at Rs 95.18 crore, is reported physically complete, the Ministry told the Lok Sabha on 15 December 2025. Union Budget 2024-25 announced a Mahabodhi Temple Corridor. In March 2025 the Ministry sanctioned Rs 165.44 crore for a Buddhist Meditation and Experience Centre at Bodh Gaya, and told the Lok Sabha on 20 July 2026 that Rs 16.54 crore had been released or authorised.