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Rh Department under General Cunningham. It is of the type known as the panchratna, or "five jewels"—that is, a temple roofed by a group of five spires or domes.

When this temple took the place of Asoka's, the Buddha was already worshipped as the Supreme Lord of the Sangha and an incarnation of Vishnu. Several of the Buddhist Kushān kings had names which were synonyms of Vishnu, and the tree was one of Vishnu's symbols. His was the mystic tree of which the sun and moon and stars are fruits. It was therefore appropriate that the spot where the Buddha attained to full knowledge of the Universal Law under the Tree of Wisdom should be marked by the symbol of world-dominion, Vishnu's sacred shrine. When in modern times the Mahant of a neighbouring Vaishnava monastery took possession of the restored temple, the Burmese Buddhists who were accustomed to worship there protested that Hindus had no right to be custodians of the holy places of Buddhism; but in all probability the Mahant's claim was historically justified, for the Vaishnavas were the heirs of Mahāyāna Buddhism, though the creed of the monks of Bodh-Gayā did not correspond with that of Sākya Muni.

The Bodh-Gayā temple is more interesting for its historical associations than for its architectural design, and unfortunately no important structural temples of the Gupta period, the classic age of Indian sculpture and painting, are extant, doubtless because they were built either of wood or of brick. But the succeeding centuries which preceded Gothic architecture in Europe were extraordinarily rich in temple building. Many volumes would be necessary to do full justice to the fertility of invention and skill of craftsmanship lavished upon the royal chapels of the dynasties which ruled over Aryāvarta.