Place · Buddhist revival society · India
Mahabodhi Society, Calcutta
Also known as Mahabodhi Society — Calcutta
The Maha Bodhi Society of India founded in Colombo on 31 May 1891 by Anagarika Dharmapala (1864-1933) and relocated to Calcutta in 1892 — the modern organisational node of the Buddhist revival in India, Sri Lanka and global Buddhism. Dharmapala's mission was to recover the Mahabodhi Temple at Bodh Gaya for Buddhist control (the temple had been under Hindu Mahanta control since the 16th century); his legal campaigns, publication of the Maha Bodhi Journal (from 1892), and sponsorship of Pali studies produced the subsequent 20th-century Buddhist resurgence. The 1931 Mulagandhakuti Vihara at Sarnath, built by the Society with Japanese donations, holds relics transferred from Taxila. The 1949 Bodh Gaya Temple Management Act transferred partial Buddhist control. The Society remains active across Asia.
- Date
- 1891–2026
- Function
- Religious institution & practice
- Condition
- living institutional tradition
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 22.570, 88.360
Connections (3)
- CampaignBodh Gayā / Mahābodhi Temple
The Mahabodhi Society was founded in Calcutta in 1891 specifically to recover the Bodh Gayā temple from the Śaiva mahant who held it, and it ran the litigation, the publicity and the international appeals for fifty years. Its headquarters were in Calcutta because the courts and the printing presses were.
- Monastic foundationAnagārika Dharmapāla
Dharmapāla founded the Mahabodhi Society in Calcutta in 1891 because that is where the courts and the presses were, and used both to reconnect Sri Lankan, Burmese, Japanese and Western Buddhists with the Indian sites. A tradition India had almost entirely lost was reassembled from outside, by a Sinhalese working in a colonial capital, using litigation and a journal as his instruments.
- Site withinKolkata
Mahabodhi Society, Calcutta sits inside Kolkata and forms one piece of its layered sacred, royal or civic landscape. The city carries this entry as one of the sites that make its urban fabric legible — a shrine, monument, institution or craft tradition specifically anchored at this location — and the city's broader history reads better when the stop is seen in its context rather than in isolation. The surrounding streets, markets and other heritage ensembles around it belong to the same single city.
On these journeys
Sources
Mahabodhi Society records and histories of modern Buddhist revival.
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