A Tree with Its Own Documented Lineage

The original Bodhi tree at Bodh Gaya has not survived unbroken from the Buddha's own time; historical and pilgrim accounts describe the tree being damaged, cut down or destroyed more than once over the centuries, and the tree growing at the site today is itself a later descendant rather than the literal tree the Buddha sat beneath. The most historically significant surviving cutting is the Sri Maha Bodhi at Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka, traditionally said to have been planted around the third century BCE from a branch of the original tree brought by the missionary nun Sanghamitta, and it is documented and maintained today as one of the oldest continuously tended trees with a recorded planting date anywhere in the world, cared for by an unbroken succession of guardians.

Cuttings from the Anuradhapura tree and from the present Bodh Gaya tree have since been propagated to temples and Buddhist centres worldwide, so that a Bodhi Day observance in a country far from India may take place literally beneath a descendant of the tree the festival commemorates, a physical continuity that gives the day's central symbol an unusually well documented material history compared with the relics and sacred sites of many other traditions.