PUNE, INDIA, April 2, 2025 (Indian Express): Over the past two months, large-scale demonstrations have erupted across India demanding that the control over the Mahabodhi temple in Bodh Gaya, Bihar, be handed over to Buddhists. These protests are the latest chapter in a decades-old dispute over who controls one of the holiest sites in Buddhism. Buddhists want the repeal of the Bodh Gaya Temple Act, 1949 (BGTA), under which the temple is currently governed. It is in Bodh Gaya, while meditating under the Bo tree, that Prince Siddhartha attained enlightenment to become the Buddha (literally, “the Enlightened One”) in 589 BCE. A simple shrine was constructed to mark the site by Emperor Ashoka in the 3rd century BCE, of which only the Vajrasana (Diamond Throne), a stone slab under the Bodhi tree next to the temple, remains. Additional structures were built during the Shunga period (2nd to 1st century BCE).

Fifth-century Chinese traveller Faxian wrote that there were three Buddhist monasteries around the temple in Gaya. But the current pyramidal structure can be dated to the reign of the Guptas in the 6th century CE. The Palas (8th-12th century CE) were the last major royal patrons of the Mahabodhi temple. By the 11th-12th centuries, Buddhism was gradually declining in the subcontinent, and so were its many centers, including in Gaya. The shrine was in a state of disrepair when Alexander Cunningham, the founder of the Archaeological Survey of India, began restoration in the 1880s. According to the website of UNESCO, which granted the Mahabodhi temple the World Heritage Site tag in 2002, the shrine was largely abandoned between the 13th and 19th centuries. But according to popular legend, which also finds mention in the shrine’s official website, a wandering Shaivite monk named Mahant Ghamandi Giri arrived in Gaya around 1590, and established what would become the Bodh Gaya Math, a Hindu monastery.

More on the dispute at source.
https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-history/explained-the-decades-old-dispute-over-who-controls-mahabodhi-temple-in-gaya-9919163/

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