Sujata Stupa

Sujata Stupa, also called Sujata Garh or Sujata Kuti, stands in the village of Bakraur, just across the Phalgu River from Bodh Gaya and about a twenty-minute walk away. It honours Sujata, a milkmaid of the village who, according to tradition, gave milk and rice to the Buddha as he sat under a banyan tree, ending his years of fasting and setting him on the Middle Way that led to enlightenment.

The first stupa dates to the 2nd century BCE, judging by pottery and a punch-marked coin found in a nearby monastery, and it was strengthened and enlarged many times. Excavations by the Archaeological Survey of India in 1973-74 and 2001-06 turned up a plaque naming the 9th-century Pala king Devapala, which fixes the last building phase. An Ashokan pillar once stood here; partly quarried for building stone in the 1800s, it was later set up at a Gaya crossroads, and in 1956 it was taken to Bodh Gaya.