Bodh Gayā

Bodh Gaya on the Phalgu River in Magadha, known as Uruvela in the Buddha's lifetime, is where Siddhartha Gautama, after six years of asceticism and rice milk offered by the village woman Sujata, sat beneath a sacred fig tree, found the Middle Way and attained enlightenment. The tree became the Bodhi Tree. Nearby shrines recall the seven weeks he spent in the area after enlightenment.

The Chinese pilgrims Faxian in the 400s and Xuanzang in the 600s recorded a thriving monastic centre. From the 1000s to the 1200s the Pithipati rajas of Magadha protected it.

Turkic invasions around the end of the 1100s shattered that Buddhist world, and the ruined site passed centuries in obscurity. The name Bodh Gaya came into use in the 1700s, while pilgrims from Sri Lanka, Tibet, Nepal and Myanmar kept its memory alive.