wanes and the world needs purification; that his religious system would continue for five thousand years and then suffer extinction, when all relics, having lost honor and worshipers, would return to the foot of this same Bo-tree, and there, assuming the form of the Buddha's body, be consumed in their own refulgence, as in a flame. Then a new Buddha shall come, Maitreya Buddha, the Buddha of Kindness, who shall redeem the world by love and again show the way to Nirvana.
To devout Buddhists the Sacred Bo-tree is the most sacred symbol and object in all the world, the living representative of Buddha himself, who distinctly enjoined its worship. When the pilgrims, bringing flowers and perfumes and offerings to Sewet, failed to find him, Ananda suggested that some object be designated for them to worship in his absence, and Buddha said: "The objects that are proper to receive worship are of three kinds. … In the last division is the tree at the foot of which I became Buddha. Therefore send to obtain a branch of that tree and set it in the court of this vihara. He who worships it will receive the same reward as if he worshiped me in person." When requested to honor this tree by sitting at the foot of it, Buddha said that when he sat under the tree at Gaya he became Buddha, and that "it was not meet he should sit in the same manner near any other tree."
Buddhists regard the Bo-tree as too sacred to be touched or robbed of a leaf, and devout Burmese pilgrims kneel, fix their eyes upon it, and in a trance
