The last Buddhist monk at Bodh Gaya, Sariputra, left for Nepal and China in 1402 and after this, we hear no more of Bodh Gaya or its temple until the beginning of the 19th century. Its plaster coating gradually crumbled in the summer heat and monsoon downpours, the roots of plants and even small trees growing on it cracked the bricks and pried them apart, and the pinnacle broke off, probably as a result of being hit by a bolt of lightning. Finally, the whole front of the temple collapsed. By the time the British surveyor Francis Buchanan-Hamilton saw it in 1811, it was a hopeless ruin and the area around it a jumble of broken masonry and piles of rubbish.
A village had grown up around the temple and the locals used the surrounding area as a toilet and a place to graze pigs. Even when the Hindu ascetic known as ‘the Mahant’ transformed the temple into a Hindu one, he made no attempt to repair it.
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Beglar had particular interest in the photography, a medium which had not been widely used in archaeology before; for the most part written descriptions or drawings of monuments and objects were thought to be sufficient. The hundreds of photographs Beglar took remain today a priceless record of how monuments looked when they were discovered, of inappropriate repairs that were subsequently made to them, and of the many that have since disappeared. Beglar retired in 1880 and little is known of his life subsequently. He died in 1907.
His contribution to uncovering, documenting and preserving India’s past was enormous although it has been largely overshadowed by his more famous colleague and superior Alexander Cunningham. It is not known if Beglar had sympathy with Buddhism; however, Colonel Olcott, in his diary, mentioned that Anagarika Dharmapala and he had managed to get an interview with Beglar and asked for his support in getting control of the Mahabodhi Temple and that he had promised to do what he could to help.
In 1880, Beglar was chosen by the Bengal government to supervise repairs to the Mahabodhi Temple. It was a job that would require much more than his engineering skill; it would need sensitivity to the temple’s historic and aesthetic character and striking a balance between its role as both a heritage monument and the focus of the devotion of millions of Buddhists around the world. He proved to be the perfect person for the job.1
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Before leaving Bodh Gaya, Beglar had a memorial stone commemorating the repairs placed unobtrusively above the inside of the main temple entrance, much as ancient kings and others left records of their gifts to or repairs to the temple. It reads: “This ancient temple of Mahabodhi, erected on the holy spot where Prince Sakya Singha became the Buddha, was repaired by the British government under Sir Ashley Eden, Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, Archaeological advisor to the government, Major General A. Cunningham, Architect Joseph David Beglar 1880.”
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- 1. Beglar visited Bodh Gaya in 1880 to assess what would be needed and came again the next year to start the work. When one considers what he eventually achieved, it is actually quite remarkable. Apart from supervising nearly a hundred workers and craftsmen and keeping within budget, he had to have thousands of bricks made to exact specifications, copy and then mould the plaster decorations for the sides of the temple, erect scaffolding as well as design and then make the bronze structure to top the temple’s pinnacle. The most challenging job of all was what to do about the front of the temple which had completely collapsed, taking half the second floor pavilion with it. Not knowing what the front of the temple originally looked like, Beglar decided to just cement it over to prevent further decay or collapse. Fortuitously, just as he began doing this, workers clearing rubbish found a tiny model of the temple, apparently a type of souvenir which used to be made to be sold to pilgrims in ancient times. This allowed Beglar to see what the front was originally like and also discover that there was once been a small pinnacle on each of the four corners of the temple’s plinth.
Accordingly, he restored all this to the temple. He also restored all the small stone and masonry stupas around the temple, many of which had been knocked over during the Burmese attempted restoration. When the main job was completed, Beglar decided to lay out a garden around the temple, selecting flowering trees that he knew in time would create a shady and cool ambiance for those who came to see it.