PATNA: Planted by Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama at city’s Buddha Smriti Park on May 27 this year, one of the two Peepal saplings is in a bad shape.
Of the two saplings, the one which is a branch of the Bodhi tree at Bodh Gaya under which Gautam Buddha attained enlightenment, is healthy and growing. But the other one, a branch of the Peepal tree of Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka, has wilted and chances of its survival look slim.
The Anuradhapura tree is of special importance for Buddhists. For, it is a branch of the Bodhi tree which was taken from Bodh Gaya to Sri Lanka by Sanghmitra, daughter of Emperor Ashoka, and planted at Mahameghavana Park, Anuradhapura.
Worried officials in Bihar’s urban development department have swung into action and requested the Mahabodhi Temple Management Committee to procure two more Peepal saplings from Anuradhapura.
“We would soon get these saplings from Sri Lanka,” urban development department principal secretary Girish Shanker told TOI on Monday. In case the sapling from Sri Lanka planted in the city’s park fails to survive, the new one would be planted at its place.
Denying any negligence by the personnel deputed in the park to look after the saplings, Shanker said, “The sapling was not very healthy from the very beginning. It was transported in a metal pot which had little soil, a fact which adversely affected its condition.”
The sapling is not dead till date, he said and added Peepal saplings have a very healthy rate of survival and, as such, one should not be surprised if the existing sapling survives and becomes a healthy plant during the rainy season.
The urban development department has been entrusted with the task of constructing the Buddha Smriti Park over a 22-acre Fraser Road plot which earlier housed a jail. The partially-completed park was inaugurated by the Dalai Lama on Buddha Purnima on May 27 this year.
Possibly this is the only place associated with Buddhism where six Buddha relics have been enshrined and two saplings of the Bodhi tree planted. The construction work of the park with a meditation centre, a library and a museum, is likely to be completed by August this year.