Precious Treasures from the Diamond Throne (Paperback)

The Mahābodhi temple at Bodhgayā in eastern India has long been recognized as the place where the Buddha sat in meditation and attained enlightenment. The site, soon identified as the ‘Diamond Throne’ or vajrāsana, became a destination for pilgrims and a focus of religious attention for more than two thousand years.

This volume presents new research on Bodhgayā and assesses the important archaeological, artistic and literary evidence that bears witness to the Buddha’s enlightenment and to the enduring significance of Bodhgayā in the history of Buddhism. The book brings together a team of international scholars to look at the history and perception of the site across the Buddhist world and its position in the networks of patronage and complex religious landscape of northern India. The volume assesses the site’s decline in the thirteenth century, as well as its subsequent revival as a result of archaeological excavations in the nineteenth century. Using the British Museum’s collections as a base, the authors discuss the rich material culture excavated from the site that highlights Bodhgayā’s importance in the field of Buddhist studies.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Michael Willis, Sam van Schaik, John Clarke

1. The Mahābodhi Temple Before its Restoration (J. P. Losty)
2. The Āsana: Where the Buddha Sat (Daniela De Simone, Dániel Balogh, Sven Bretfield)
3. Pīṭhīpati Puzzles: Custodians of the Diamond Throne (Dániel Balogh)
4. Early Burmese Inscriptions from Bodhgaya (Tilman Frasch)
5. The Internalisation of the Vajrāsana (Sam van Schaik)
6. Tibetan Inscriptions in the British Museum Archive (Tsering Gonkatsang, Michael Willis)
7. Buddhist Sealings and the ye dharmā Stanza (Peter Skilling)
8. Dhāraṇī Seals in the Cunningham Collection (Gergely Hidas)
9. A Terracotta Plaque with an Old Mon Inscription (Marc Miyake, Tilman Frasch, Michael Willis)
10. Five Terracotta Plaques with Figurative Imagery (Serena Biondo)
11. The Mahābodhi Plaque of the Goddess Mārīcī (Jinah Kim, Kashinath Tamot, Sushma Jansari)
12. From Bodhgayā to Berlin (Claudine Bautze-Picron)
13. Numismatic Finds at Bodhgayā (Robert Bracey)
14. Deposits at Bodhgayā: Objects, Materials, Analysis (Michael Willis, Joanna Whalley, Beatriz Cifuentes, Robert Bracey)
15. Chinese Inscriptions from Bodhgayā (Michael Willis, Serena Biondo)
16. Materials of Plaques 1887,0717.146-147 (Marei Hacke)

Sam van Schaik is a specialist in Tibetan Buddhism and is the head of the Endangered Archives Programme at the British Library. Before this he was a principal investigator on the ERC project Beyond Boundaries: Religion, Region, Language and the State. He is the author of several books including Tibet: A History, Tibetan Zen and Buddhist Magic.

Daniela De Simone is an archaeologist and a museum curator. She studied Indian languages and cultures at L’Orientale, University of Naples. Daniela was a researcher of the ERC project Beyond Boundaries: Religion, Region, Language and the State and curated the British Museum’s permanent exhibit of South Asian archaeological materials. Before this, she was Assistant Programme Specialist at UNESCO New Delhi and Field Director of the Italian Archaeological Mission to Nepal for the Italian Institute for Africa and the Orient.

Gergely Hidas completed a DPhil in Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford. Between 2014 and 2019 he worked as a team member of the Beyond Boundaries project at the British Museum. He is the author of Mahāpratisarā-Mahāvidyārājñī: The Great Amulet, Great Queen of Spells (Aditya Prakashan, 2012), A Buddhist Ritual Manual on Agriculture: Vajratuṇḍasamayakalparāja (De Gruyter, 2019) and Powers of Protection: the Buddhist Tradition of Spells in the Dhāraṇīsaṃgraha Collections (De Gruyter, 2021).

Michael Willis is leading Beyond Boundaries: Religion, Region, Language and the State, a project funded by the European Research Council (ERC) that is based in the British Museum, the British Library and the School of Oriental and African Studies. He is the author of The Archaeology of Hindu Ritual: Temples and the Establishment of the Gods (Cambridge, 2009) and a number of other books on Indian art, archaeology and history.