The Mahabodhi temple at Bodhgaya 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 vajrasana, became a destination for pilgrims and a focus of religious attention for more than two thousand years.

This volume presents new research on Bodhgaya and assesses the important archaeological, artistic and literary evidence that bears witness to the Buddha's enlightenment and to the enduring significance of Bodhgaya 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 Bodhgaya's importance in the field of Buddhist studies.
Precious Treasures from the Diamond Throne; Edited by Sam van Schaik, Daniela De Simone, Gergely Hidas, and Michael Willis; British Museum; Paperback (8.25 x 11.5 inches), 224 pp, $80.00

Sam van Schaik (editor) 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 (editor) 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 (editor) 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 Mahapratisara-Mahavidyarajni: The Great Amulet, Great Queen of Spells (Aditya Prakashan, 2012), A Buddhist Ritual Manual on Agriculture: Vajratundasamayakalparaja (De Gruyter, 2019) and Powers of Protection: the Buddhist Tradition of Spells in the Dharanisamgraha Collections (De Gruyter, 2021).

Michael Willis (editor) 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.