Erected about the middle of the second century over the ruins of Aṡoka’s temple, at the spot where Gautama attained Buddhahood. The original object of its erection seems to have been simply and solely to serve as a monument, and not as a Dāgaba or receptacle for relics. Very soon, however, monuments of this kind were made to enshrine images, and were used as temples and places of worship. On inquiry I found that the ancient image or images of Buddha, which once occupied the shrine in the ancient Buddha-Gayā temple, had been destroyed or carried off at different times[192], and that another stone image, believed to have been carved in the eighth century, had been recently substituted for it. It is remarkable that during the process of restoring the so-called ‘diamond throne,’ on which the statues were placed, a mass of fragments of coral, sapphire, cornelian, crystal, ruby, pearl, ivory, and gold, but no diamond, was found compacted or cemented together in front of it[193]. At the back of the raised terrace which surrounded the ancient temple was a Pīpal or sacred fig-tree, fabled to be the very tree under which Gautama sat during his course of profound meditation ending in Buddhahood (see p. 31). Its vitality was on the wane, for its decaying branches drooped over the parapet as if they sought, like those of a neighbouring Banyan tree, to gain new life by rooting themselves in the ground beneath. Some Buddhist pilgrims happened, at the moment of my visit, to be worshipping at the temple, deputed by the King of Burma to present offerings. I observed that they had brought packets of gold-leaf, and had gilded the stone steps that surrounded the tree. Having performed this act of homage, they sat near muttering their prayer-formularies. No doubt they believed it to be the very Bodhi-tree of Gautama’s time, the stem of which had been miraculously preserved, though, had it been really so, the stem would have been about twenty-three centuries old. Considering the well-known properties of the Pīpal tree, it is possible that the worshippers were, after all, paying honour to the descendant of the original tree, the fact, no doubt, being that as each tree began to decay a new one was produced, by the dropping of seeds into the old roots and the springing up of fresh scions. Probably most of the sacred trees in the neighbourhood of Buddhist temples throughout India, Ceylon, and Burma were originally raised from seeds brought from the ancient Buddha-Gayā tree. [Illustration: ANCIENT BUDDHIST TEMPLE AT BUDDHA-GAYĀ, AS RESTORED IN 1884.] It is a received tradition that a shoot from this tree was taken by the Missionary Mahendra, son of Aṡoka, in the third century B.C. to Ceylon, and planted at Anurādha-pura, where its descendant still flourishes. When I again visited Buddha-Gayā in 1884, I found that the old pyramidal temple had been restored according (as is conjectured) to Hiouen Thsang’s description of the Vihāra of his day.