The Sacred Bodhi Tree - 409 Sin Ming Ave

Bodhi - The name given to the tree at Bodh Gaya, a small town in the northern Indian state of Bihar, under which the Buddha sat on the night he attained enlightenment. The tree itself was a type of fig with the botanical name Ficus religiosa. In the centuries after the Buddha, the Bodhi tree became a symbol of the Buddha's presence and an object of worship. King Asoka's eldest daughter, the nun Sanghamitta, took a cutting of the tree to Sri Lanka where it still grows in the island's ancient capital of Anaradapura. Sangamittā carried the right south branch of the Bodhi-Tree (selected by Ashoka from the Maha Bodhi-Tree in Gaya) on a ship to Anurādhapura, during the 12th year of Ashoka's reign. The planting of the Bodhi Tree was a grand ceremony performed by the king himself with assistance from the nobles of Kājaragāma, Candanagāma and Tivakka, in the presence of Sangamitta and her brother Mahindra. The tree took eight roots, yielded fruits and seeds. The Bodhi-Tree at Anuradhapura was well tended by successive royal family members of Sri Lanka over the centuries, so much so that a village near Anurādhapura was also earmarked to provide for maintenance of the tree. While the original at Bodh Gaya was destroyed by King Puspyamitra during his persecution of Buddhism in the 2nd century BC and the tree planted to replace it, probably an offspring, was destroyed by King Sassanka at the beginning of the 7th century AD. The tree that grows at Bodh Gaya today was planted in 1881 by a British archaeologist after the previous one had died of old age a few years before. Many temples throughout the Buddhist world have Bodhi trees growing in them which are or are believed to be offspring of the one from Anaradapura and their worship forms an important part of popular Buddhist piety.