Lo, the tree beneath which the Buddha attained enlightenment! But it's not the one you think. This is one of five similar scenes depicted on the outer railing of Bhargut Great Stupa in Madhya Pradesh, ca. 150-100 BCE.
What gives? This Indian fig tree isn't the one beneath which our present Buddha achieved Enlightenment but the one where Koṇāgamana, one of his predecessors, did. You can see the scene (in this early stage of Buddhist art, Buddhas were represented as absences) in a new exhibition on the origins of Buddhist art just opening at the Met.
For the record, Koṇāgamana was the twenty-sixth of twenty-nine known Buddhas. He's the second of the five in the current kalpa. Our Gautama is the fourth. So stay tuned: when Maitreya, the Buddha of the future, achieves awakening, it'll be under a tree like this too!
[Correction: Maitreya will seek out a different tree, a mesua ferrea.]
