ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book aims to engage with the issue of how people in the past and present respond to and interact with the Mahabodhi Temple and its environs to construct and sometimes re-construct what they perceive as its sacredness. It seeks to document and deconstruct the taken-for-granted local narratives, mainly to supplant the stability of established institutional accounts regarding the sacredness of Bodhgaya. By teasing out the polities and the politics of the temple site and thus removing the chaff and noise, the book attempts to understand and authenticate the longue duree practices as distinct from the short ones. It provides the evolutionary history of the Mahabodhi Temple from its origins as a humble, open pavilion shrine to a majestic high structure. The book focuses on the most venerated object in the Mahabodhi Temple complex — the Bodhi tree.
