Buddhist monks offer prayers at the Mahabodhi Mahavihara after the temple was reopened on Monday. Picture by Suman

Gaya, July 8: The holy chants silenced by Sunday’s serial blasts in Mahabodhi Mahavihara were reverberating once again in the World Heritage Site on Monday.

Monks of Bodhgaya Temple Management Committee (BTMC) and representatives of other monasteries in Bodhgaya participated in a special prayer held around 5.30pm today to send across a peace message to the world that the temple has been re-opened after a brief shutdown. Around 150 monks participated in the prayer session.

“Buddhist monks from Sri Lanka, Thailand, Myanmar and other countries participated in the one-hour prayer,” Arvind Singh, a member of the BTMC, told PTI.

Less than 40 hours after nine low-intensity blasts rocked the temple town, the gate to the Mahavihara was opened to devotees and tourists.

From 7pm on Monday, visitors were seen taking strolls on the lush green premises of the Mahavihara campus. The gate to the Mahavihara opens every day for devotees and tourists at 5am and the entry closes at 9pm.

The temple was closed for visitors since Sunday 6am for probes being conducted by teams of National Investigation Agency (NIA), National Security Guard (NSG) and Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL), Patna.

Monks of Mahayana and Therawada traditions like any other day offered prayers inside the sanctum sanctorum in front of the Buddha statue. The 11 Therawada tradition monks of the BTMC offer prayers between 5.30am and 6am. In the evening, monks of Mahayana tradition of Tibetan monastery offer prayers between 6pm and 6.30pm and the monks of the Therawada tradition again offer prayers from 6.30pm to 7pm. Today was no different. Both the traditions offered prayers according to their schedule.

Since the Mahavihara was closed for more than 36 hours after the explosions, a few prayer sessions were disrupted on Sunday.

Fra Bodhi Nanda Muni, the founder-cum-president of Buddha Thai Bharat Society, said: “The 10 monks and five nuns who regularly go inside the sanctum sanctorum of the Mahavihara and offer prayers in front of the Buddha statue in the morning and in the evening could not do it on Sunday evening and Monday morning. There is a sense of panic among the monks from across the world.”

However, tourists keen on visiting the world heritage site left aside fear of the “terror attack” and were found peeping through the gates to get a look at the temple till it was closed for common people.

Andreas (22), who had arrived from the Netherlands on Sunday afternoon, was stopped at the gate today evening.

Brushing aside any kind of panic, Andreas said: “I came to know of the blasts after arriving in Bodhgaya on Sunday. However, I am not scared since I do not believe it was a terrorist attack.”

Once the gates were opened, devotees and the tourists were frisked extensively before their entry to the campus.

According to Gaya district magistrate-cum-BTMC chairman, D. Balamurugan, adequate deployment of security personnel has been made in and around the shrine.

At present, the security of the Mahavihara has been handed over to the district police and to the Bihar Military Police (BMP) jawans.

Injured duo better

The condition of the two monks, who were injured in the explosions on Sunday, is stated to be out of danger. “Both of them are out of danger,” superintendent of Anugrah Narayan Medical College & Hospital, Gaya, Sita Ram Prasad said.

He said both had been kept in the intensive care unit of the hospital and senior doctors were attending them.

Prasad said the Tibetan monk Tenzing Dorjee had received bomb injuries in the right knee joint and right ankle. The second monk from Myanmar suffered wounds in the right arm, abdomen and both legs, the ANMCH superintendent said.