Where is Animisa Cetiya?

By Bhante Dhammika of Australia

According to the introduction to the Jataka, after the Buddha’s awakening he spent seven weeks at Bodh Gaya. During the second week there he sat gazing at the Bodhi Tree without blinking. In time a shrine called the Animisa Cetiya, the Shrine of Steadfast Gaze, came to be built on this site and became one of the seven sacred locations (sattamahatthana) at Bodh Gaya. When today’s pilgrims go to Bodh Gaya and enter the sacred precincts in front of them they will see a flight of stairs and beyond it the magnificent Mahabodhi Temple and on the right a small temple painted white. A large sign next to this temple identifies it as the Animisa Cetiya, the place where the Buddha sat staring at the Bodhi Tree without blinking. In this article I am going to argue that this small temple is not the Animisa Cetiya and suggest where the real one is.

With the almost complete disappearance of Buddhism after the 13th century, Bodh Gaya was abandoned, its temples and shrines fell into ruin and the very location of most of seven sacred places was forgotten. In 1877 a mission from the King of Burma came to restore the Mahabodhi Temple and in the process they destroyed many of the smaller shrines around it, often leaving no more than their foundations. After the British engineer/archaeologist Joseph Beglar excavated the whole area in 1880, the only structures that were more than just foundations were the Mahabodhi Temple, the small temple that shelters the footprints stone, what is now identified, probably incorrectly, as the Ratnaghara Cetiya, and a small single-spire temple which a large sign now identifies as the Animisa Cetiya. I will call this building Temple A. How did this temple get to be identified as the Animisa Cetiya?

Towards the end of the 19th century when pilgrims began returning to Bodh Gaya they wanted to see all the places where the Buddha had stayed during his seven weeks there. Being mostly simple folk with limited knowledge of history or archaeology it is only natural that they would identify any existing structures with the ones they wanted to see. Having entered the Mahabodhi Temple and worshipped the Bodhi Tree their next concern was to see the place where the Buddha had sat for seven days gazing at the tree. Other than the Mahabodhi Temple itself the most noticeable structure was Temple A and so it gradually came to be identified with the Animisa Cetiya. What had been just uninformed popular opinion gradually became anaccepted fact when in the 1980s the Temple Management Committee decided to put up signs identifying the various sacred sites around Bodh Gaya after consultation with the leading monks. The abbot of the Burmese Vihara produced a book called the ‘Jinatthapakasani’ written by Bhikkhu Kyithe Laythat in 1920 which identified Temple A as the Animisa Chaitya. In this book the author says he had used the Tipitaka and the commentaries to try to locate all the seven sacred sites “to the best of my ability.” While this monk no doubt had strong faith, this is not very helpful in settling questions pertaining to history or archaeology and his conclusions were at best uninformed guesses. Nevertheless, the Temple Management Committee accepted his conclusions and Temple A officially became the Animisa Cetiya.

But there are two reasons why Temple A cannot be the Animisa Cetiya. It will be noticed that it sits on the top of a very high hillock; in fact, it is nearly the highest ground around Bodh Gaya. This is not a natural hill but a part of the large artificial mound built up by centuries of habitation. The fact that Temple A sits on the top of this mound rather than on the original ground level as does the Mahabodhi Temple, proves that it was built at a very late date. Secondly, the Animisa Cetiya was built to mark the place where the Buddha sat gazing at the Bodhi Tree so we can safely conjecture that it would have had a Buddha statue in it positioned to face towards the Bodhi Tree. Temple A faces towards the river, not towards the Bodhi Tree. These facts are sufficient to establish that Temple A cannot be the Animisa Cetiya.

So if Temple A is not the Animisa Cetiya what is it? In the 19th century the British archaeologist Alexander Cunningham discovered an inscription at Bodh Gaya which might throw some light on this temple’s real identity. Unfortunately, Cunningham did not say exactly where he found this inscription. It recorded the building of a shrine at Bodh Gaya by a monk named Srimitra sometime between the years 1183 and 1192. The inscription also mentions that a statue of Lion’s Roar Avalokitesvara (a Mahayana bodhisattva always shown with a lion), and three statues of Tara were placed in this temple. When Rajendralal Mitra was at Bodh Gaya he noticed that Temple A had a statue of Lion’s Roar Avalokitesvara in it and he also noted that local people referred to this temple as Tara Vihara. This statue of Avalokitesvara is still enshrined in Temple A and dates from the 11th or 12th century. The Tibetan pilgrim Dharmasvamin who was in Bodh Gaya in 1234 mentioned a Tara Vihara as one of the prominent sights at Bodh Gaya. He also mentioned that one of the statues enshrined in this temple was called Tara of the River and that it faced the river. These are good reasons for thinking that Temple A is the one built by Srimitra.

So, where is or was the real Animisa Cetiya? There are three facts that can help in answering this question. As it was built to mark the place where the Buddha sat gazing at the Bodhi Tree it must have been within view of the Tree and almost certainly facing it. It has to be clearly understood that the present Bodhi Tree does not grow now in its original place. Before the Mahabodhi Temple was built it grew just behind the Vajarasana, the exact spot where the Buddha was sitting when he attained enlightenment, i.e. the altar inside the Mahabodhi Temple. The introduction to the Jataka gives us precise information about the location of the Animisa Cetiya, saying that it was “slightly to the east, north of” the Vajarasana (pacinanisste uttaradisabhage). This is confirmed by the Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang who visited Bodh Gaya in the 6th century and who also mentioned that the Animisa was north of Mahabodhi Temple.

If we look directly north of the Mahabodhi Temple we see the foundations of a rectangular structure of what was no doubt once a large temple. This structure, which in Cunningham’s map is marked as Temple U, is much the same as it was when it was excavated by Beglar in 1880. It will be noticed that the entrance of this Temple U faces to where the Bodhi Tree originally grew, right behind to the altar now inside the Mahabodhi Temple, i.e., at the Vajarasana, although tilted just slightly to the east. This makes it almost certain that Temple U represents the remains of the original Animisa Cetiya. Note that Temple A on Cunningham’s map, a little to the north-east of the front of the Mahabodhi Temple is called Tara Deva.

One more thing should be added. When Cunningham was excavating around the Mahabodhi Temple in the 1870s he found a small clay tablet with a temple housing a Buddha statue stamped on its surface. He conjectures, probably correctly, that it was a souvenir sold to pilgrims at Bodh Gaya. Interestingly, this is the only image of the Buddha ever found at Bodh Gaya in a meditation gesture (dhyana mudra) rather than in the earth touching gesture (bhumipassa mudra). It is quite possible that this is meant to be a depiction of the Animisa Cetiya.