Other versions of the enlightenment give other incidents which are not rendered less credible by their omission from the narrative quoted, for it is clearly an epitome put together for a special didactic purpose.  But still the story as related at the beginning of the Mahavagga of the Vinaya has a stronger smack of mythology than the passages quoted from the Sutta-Pitaka.  In these last the Bodhi-tree[329] is mentioned only incidentally, which is natural, for it is a detail which would impress later piety rather than the Buddha himself.  But there is no reason to be sceptical as to the part it has played in Buddhist history.  Even if we had not been told that he sat under a tree, we might surmise that he did so, for to sit under a tree or in a cave was the only alternative for a homeless ascetic.  The Mahavagga states that after attaining Buddhahood he sat crosslegged at the foot of the tree for seven days uninterruptedly, enjoying the bliss of emancipation, and while there thought out the chain of causation which is only alluded to in the suttas quoted above.  He also sat under three other trees, seven days under each.  Heavy rain came on but Mucalinda, the king of the serpents, “came out of his abode and seven times encircled the body of the Lord with his windings and spread his great hood over the Lord’s head.”  Here we are in the domain of mythology:  this is not a vignette from the old religious life on the banks of the Neranjara but a work of sacred art:  the Holy Supreme Buddha sitting immovable and imperturbable in the midst of a storm sheltered by the folds of some pious monster that the artist’s fancy has created.

The narrative quoted from the Majjhima-Nikaya does not mention that the Buddha during his struggle for enlightenment was assailed or tempted by Mara, the personification of evil and of transitory pleasures but also of death.  But that such an encounter—­in some respects analogous to the temptation of Christ by the Devil—­formed part of the old tradition is indicated by several passages in the Pitakas[330] and not merely by the later literature where it assumes a prominent and picturesque form.  This struggle is psychologically probable enough but the origin of the story, which is exhaustively discussed in Windisch’s Buddha und Mara, seems to lie not so much in any account which the Buddha may have given of his mental struggles as in amplifications of old legends and in dramatizations of metaphors which he may have used about conquering death.

The Bodhi-tree is still shown at Bodh-Gaya.  It stands on a low terrace behind the temple, the whole lying in a hollow, below the level of the surrounding modern buildings, and still attracts many pilgrims from all Buddhist lands though perhaps not so many as the tree at Anuradhapura in Ceylon, which is said to be sprung from one of its branches transplanted thither.  Whatever title it may have to the reverence of the faithful rests on lineage rather than identity,