BODHIVAMSA or MAHABODHIVAMSA, a prose poem in elaborate Sanskritized Pali, composed by Upatissa in the first half of the iith century A.D. Based on a Sinhalese original, after outlining the early history of Buddha and Buddhism it describes the bringing of a branch of the celebrated Bo or Bodhi tree (i.e., Wisdom Tree, under which the Buddha had attained wisdom) to Ceylon in the 3rd century B.C. The Bodhivamsa is mainly a compilation from the Nidanakatha Mahavamsa, and other sources, but it has occasionally preserved details of the older tradition not otherwise known to us.
Edition in Pali for the Pali Text Society by S. Arthur Strong (1891) ; see W. Geiger, Pali Literatur und Sprache, p. 25 (Strasbourg, 1916).