Gayā-Bodhgayā: The Origins of a Pilgrimage Complex

Abstract

In this paper I bring the history of the Hindu traditions of sraddha and the traditions surrounding Gaya to bear on the history of Gaya and Bodhgaya in order to answer a simple question: Why did the Buddha go to Bodhgaya to achieve enlightenment? The first half of my paper briefly address the textual history of sraddha in the Brahmanical sources from the earliest domestic ritual manuals, the Grhyasutras, to the dharma and Epic literature, where its centrality to the Gaya pilgrimage is commonly accepted. I then examine the Buddhist texts from the same time frame that evidence the practice of sraddha, highlighting the conceptions of ancestor worship shared by both Brahmanical and Buddhist sources. In the second half of my paper I synthesize the history of sraddha and the evidence of the Hindu conception of Gaya and the Buddhist descriptions of Gaya and Uruvela to describe Gaya during the life of the Buddha and reflect upon why the Buddha is said to have gone there to achieve enlightenment. In the end I hope to expand the context within which we study Bodhgaya, problematizing it to some degree, in order to understand why this place attracted the Buddha.