CHAPTER IX
MAHABODHI, THE PLACE OF GREAT INTELLIGENCE
OT Jerusalem nor even Mecca is held in greater reverence by the millions of Christians and Mohammedans than is Buddha-Gaya by many more millions of Buddhists, who, inhabiting every part of Asia save India, look upon the temple at Mahabodhi as their greatest shrine, to the Sacred Bo-tree beside it as their most holy relic and living symbol, the most venerated, if not strictly the most venerable, tree on earth—Bodhi-druma, the Tree of Knowledge, beneath which Gautama became the Buddha, the Awakened, the Enlightened.
The so-called Buddhist Holy Land, the ancient Magadha, lies east of Benares and south of the Ganges River, within a radius of one hundred and fifty miles from Buddha-Gaya. The birthplace of the Nepalese prince Siddhartha, and the original burial-place of Gautama Buddha, so recently identified and excavated, are two hundred miles north of Buddha-Gaya, near the Nepal frontier. Every place associated with the life of the Great Teacher was marked by an inscribed column or a votive stupa by the emperor Asoka 250 b.c.; and from the abun-
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