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Title: Ruins of Buddhistic Temples in Prågå Valley—Tyandis Båråbudur, Mendut and Pawon

Author: I. Groneman

Translator: J. H.

Release date: August 27, 2020 [eBook #63057]
                Most recently updated: April 9, 2023

Language: English

Credits: MFR, Stephen Hutcheson, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RUINS OF BUDDHISTIC TEMPLES IN PRÅGÅ VALLEY—TYANDIS BÅRÅBUDUR, MENDUT AND PAWON ***




                      Ruins of Buddhistic Temples
                                   IN
                             Prågå-Valley.


                  Tyanḍis Båråbudur, Mĕndut and Pawon

                                   BY

                            Dr. I. GRONEMAN,

                   translated from the dutch by J. H.


                       Druk van H. A. BENJAMINS,
                               Semarang,
                                 1912.




                                Preface.


When in 1896 I was obliged to retire from practice, on account of
sickness, I shortly after took up my residence at Jogyåkartå again in
order to devote myself to the antiquarian and ethnological studies dear
to me, and to which purpose I had to establish myself in the
neighbourhood of the principal Hindu ruins in Java, that is, in the
plain of _Parambanan_, and in the valley of _Prågå_ whereas I could not
rely on being assisted by the Dutch Government or whomsoever; I had
grown _too old_ under a system of Government who even refuse a professor
septuagenarian to follow his profession.

As for the Indian antiquities however, there are still many things to be
learned, not only because many a sculpture and symbolical ornament of
building has not yet been explained or, so to say, insufficiently
interpreted, but also because some of these images have been wrongly
understood and expounded. I therefore thought it my duty to have my
knowledge of them increased by a continued study of the antiquities
themselves, and by consulting such writings as I could dispose of with
my limited means.

I also would comply with other people’s wishes by giving a simple
description of the most interesting ruin in the village of _Mĕndut_
situated by the way-side to the _Båråbudur_, and mention the small
_tyanḍi Pawon_ lying in its neighbourhood.

And so I gathered all data for an up-to-date _fifth_ edition in behalf
of the continually increasing number of visitors who come to visit these
incomparable temples, which, in spite of expensive but insufficient
restoration, seem doomed to decay.

                                                                    _G._
  _Jogyårkartå 1906._

Having succeeded at last in finding a person from whose hand both the
editor and myself express a wish to see a good English translation of
this little book, I consequently completed and rewrote the former text
(1906-1907.).




                               CONTENTS.


                                                                   Page.
  Preface                                                              3
  Buddhistic temples in Prågå-valley                                   5
  Tyanḍi Mĕndut                                                       13
  Tyanḍi Pawon                                                        23
  Tyanḍi Båråbudur                                                    26
  Concluding word                                                     90
  Errata                                                              92




              Ruins of Buddhistic temples in Prågå-valley.


I.

The Buddhists believe their community, their worship, their church, or
whatever one may be inclined to call this, to have been founded 24
centuries ago by the wise and humane king’s son of _Kapilavastu_, called
Gautama, the _Shâkja muni_ or wise _Shâkja_, _Buddha_ or the
_Enlightened_. All that which the later legends related either of Buddha
himself or of his _former lives_, they consider historically true.

Competent Orientalists, among whom the Dutch ex-professor Dr. H. Kern,
stated however that, much about those legends that _cannot_ be true from
a historical point of view, will become quite comprehensible and
possible as soon as taken in a mythical sense, and when we understand
the hero of the myth to be a sun-god. And then it will be perfectly
indifferent to us, non-Buddhists, whether those legends may or may not
have historical foundations and whether the _Buddha_ of the Buddhists
may have really lived and existed or not.

Still it is an indisputed matter of fact, that the Buddhist religion
must have existed as such for about three centuries before the beginning
of our era, and professed by king Ashoka _the great_. Inscriptions
partly saved, and found upon columns, and on the walls of rocks, prove
all this to be just[1].

This Buddhism taught that mankind might be freed from any sensual
passion, and sin by following a pure conduct of life, and from the curse
of being continually reincarnated in either a human or animal being, and
that it could gain eternal rest as the highest reward of virtue on
earth. And therefore Buddhism taught self-command, self-denial and
self-conquest; the love of all beings either man or beast: patience with
others, the sons of different castes, and patience too with the
followers of all other religions.

The original Buddhism can’t be called a religion, for it knew no god and
didn’t believe in a personal immortality. But like any other creation of
time and of human desire to form and reform again and again, Buddhism
also lost much of its original character, and so it came to pass that
Buddhism in the first year of our era after its separation into two main
sections, the so-called _southern_ and _northern_ churches, especially
the last mentioned or the _Mahâyâna_ acknowledged, besides the Buddha of
this world, quite other Buddhas to be the redeemers of former and future
worlds, whilst the Buddhists thought all of them to be the revelations
of a same original and impersonal deity, _Adi-Buddha_; and even the gods
or some of the gods of the Hindus were admitted as the awatâras of the
same first _Buddha_[2]. It may be easily understood that this Buddhism
also invented hell in contradiction to heaven. However, by no means an
abode for the eternal damned, such as the hell of Christianity alludes
to.

But the southern church, the Hînayâna swerved less far from the ancient
doctrine, though it may be true that it did not always keep its
originality, for in its pagodae, are also found a few sculptures
honoured there as the representations of Buddha himself[3].

Since some centuries Buddhism has been repelled from its country of
birth by the ancient Hinduism. Its place was taken by the shivaistic and
other Hindu religions which at their turn again were partly superseded
by Islâmism.

But the Hînayânistic worship still exists in _Ceylon_ and in
Further-India at _Burma_, and _Siam_ and _Kamboja_ and Mahâjânism at
_Népâl_ and at _Tibet_ and, more or less degenerated, in _China_ and
_Japan_. It flourished for some centuries in the island of Java, but
became entirely exterminated by the fanatic and absolutely intolerant
followers of _Allah_ and _Mohammed_.

This was death after life; slavery after the command of senses; the
decline of a civilisation lost for ever, and of a highly developed art
whose products, by time’s tooth changed into ruins, still testify to her
lost greatness.

This Mahâyânism only acknowledged Buddha the redeemer of _this_ world,
next to him were honoured the Buddhas of _three_ former worlds, and even
a _fifth_ Buddha, the redeemer of a future world, which is to exist in
the darkness of ages after the crack of this doom. These are the five
_Dhyâni-Buddhas_: _Wairotyana_, _Akshobya_, _Ratnasambhava_, _Amitâbha_
and _Amoghasiddha_. And with the exception of these five Buddhas they
also honoured the five _Dhyâni-Bodhisattvas_ or Buddha’s sons or Buddhas
in a state of being, that is, in a state of self-exercise or self-denial
which precedes the Buddhaship. They are in the same order of succession:
_Samantabhadra_, _Wadyrapâni_, _Ratnapâni_, _Padmapâni_ and
_Wishvapâni_. The southern church doesn’t know these Dhyâni-Buddhas and
Bodhisattvas, so their images on the Båråbudur and on other tyanḍis in
Java prove to us that the Buddhists of those temples belonged to the
_northern_ church.

Proofs of the existence of Hînayânism in Java, there were none as yet.
But the Chinese Buddhist _J Tsing_, who visited India and the Dutch
Indonésian countries in the seventh century of our era, wrote us that at
that period of time Hînayânism must have ruled here in Java[4].

It goes without saying that even the Mahâyânists honoured, among others,
the Buddha of _this their_ world, _Amitâbha_, as their Lord and
Redeemer, putting faith in his life on earth as man and prince’s son, as
ascetic and preacher, just as the Israelites do believe in the personage
of their _Jahvé_, their Lord God of Hosts, their god of battle and
revenge, and just like our German ancestors trusted in _Odhin_, and
_Thor_, and in the dying sun-god _Baldur_.

And when we wish to judge and understand the temples built by these
Buddhists, we also ought to start from that point of view, and accept
the hero of the legend as if he should have really lived, and suffered
in order to redeem the world from the burden of the sin of life, and
from the curse of death, and infinite regenerations.


II.

The Buddhists assert the ashes of their Buddha to have been divided
after his cremation into eight towns, and buried there. King _Ashoka_ is
said to have seven of these graves re-opened again so as to distribute
the holy ashes among some 84000 metal, crystal or stone vases or urns to
cause them to be spread throughout his empire and without, and kept
under barrows or _stûpas_.

We know the proper history of Buddhism to begin with this king in the
_third_ century _before_ our era, and in several parts of Hindustan are
found still undamaged inscriptions chiselled at his order upon rocks as
so many unobjectionable evidences of this fact. I willingly allow this
number of 84000 to be very exaggerated—yet, it is a fact proved by many
an existing and opened grave, that the Buddhists of that or later date,
and wherever they might have settled, always kept small quantities of
ashes or bones they considered the remains of their Buddha’s corpse, in
order to be buried under earthen or stone barrows to honour them as the
relics of the great Master himself.[5]

There where the Buddhists founded a community, there, under such a hill
or _stûpa_ they also buried an urn of ashes whereas the hill itself was
honoured as the Master’s grave.[6]

Those hills however, were badly protected from the influences of
temperature and time, and not proof against the profaning hand of man,
and therefore built of stone, the _dâgaba_ or _dagob_, generally placed
on a pedestal of composed leaves of the lotus, the _padmâsana_, hardly
dispensible to Indian images.[7]

Many temples’ ornaments have been copied after these dagobs, among
others, the shape of the small-sized prayer-bell which is still rung by
the _visju_ in chinese temples even at this day. These are facts proving
this tomb-stone’s having been highly honoured.


III.

Not anything do we know about the Buddhists of eleven centuries ago who
once populated these regions where afterwards arose the Mohammedan
empire of _Mataram_. We only know that there formerly must have existed
a _Hindu_ empire of this name because of a found copper engraving all
covered with ancient-javanese writing which contained in a oath-formula
the words: “_Sri mahârâja i Mataram_.”

We understand them to have come from India, probably from the North, but
we don’t know when this happened, and when they first began to deposit
their Buddha ashes worthily.

It may be easily imagined however, that also the _Båråbudur_ must have
been such a depository, and so much the more, because of its being too
large to think of a mausoleum built in honour of even the most powerful
prince of that empire.

In flat defiance of _Rhys Davids_’s opinion who declared the Båråbudur
to be only 7 centuries old, we, on the other hand, are inclined to give
this monument, according to later data, more than eleven centuries[8].

That the Buddhists of Central Java were a powerful nation at that period
of time may fully appear from the extent and splendour of the building
which surpasses all other Buddha- and Hindu temples on all the earth.

And though it may be true that the grouping of the rock temples of
_Alara_ (vulg. _Ellora_) and _Ajunta_ in India occupies more room, and
granting _Angkor_ in _Kamboja_ (which wasn’t a Buddhist temple) to seem
more majestic when seen at a distance, still, according to competent
judges who also visited these ruins, the Båråbudur is grander by far as
well for the unity of its whole as for the harmony of its different
parts, and for both the nobleness of the schemer’s thought and the
excellence of the execution.

This harmony supports the opinion of this building’s having been built
after the scheme of one and the very same architect; a man of a
surprising intellectual capacity indeed, who could have conceived such a
scheme to be carried out in an incalculable number of years by hundreds
of thousands of labourers.

We cannot possibly believe that so much labour and time would have been
spent on the building of a prince’s mausoleum, however powerful he might
have been.

Moreover, there are reasons enough to suppose that _the_ prince of
_this_ empire, at whose command the Båråbudur must have been built,
commenced or partly achieved, should have died before the finishing of
this colossal work, and that his ashes were buried in the sumptuous
grave temple, at that period of time most likely already finished, and
the ruins of which we shall visit in the _desså_ (native village) of
_Mĕndut_. Or more exactly: that his successor or children or
blood-relations, or perhaps his people, built this _tyanḍi_ on the pit
in which those ashes had been put away, and that as a worthy mausoleum
to the king who once presented his subjects with the Båråbudur.

Some unfinished parts of both the Båråbudur and the ruins in the valley
of _Parambanan_, especially the unfinished imageries at the foot (hidden
again under the outer-terrace) on the outer-wall of the large temple,
make us suppose that these products of art had been _scarcely_ achieved,
and the imageries _hardly_ finished and placed on their walls, when the
buddhistic empire of Central Java fell into a state of decay or became
ruined at all.

Upwards of a thousand years have rolled since over these colossal ruins.
Earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions replaced their masses of stone,
solar heat and torrents introduced and supported their decay, parasitic
plants dispersed their foundations, and narrow-minded slaves of
ignorance and fanaticism damaged or spoilt many of their produce of
art—still the ruins stand there as an impressive fact scarcely no less
uncredible than undeniable; a majestic product of a master-mind of the
past, a stone epic immortal even in its decline.


On account of its general form (“_par le dessin général, mais par là
seulement_”) the French scholar about Indian matters _A. Barth_ called
the Båråbudur the only _stûpa_ in Java[9], and this may be just when we
understand a _stûpa_ to be only those barrows where were buried some
ashes or another relic of the Buddha himself, and when we consider all
other _tyanḍis_ in this island—with the exception of the monasteries
which are no _tyanḍis_—to be nothing else but the mausolea of sons of
Princes, or of _gurus_ and monks, or belonging perhaps to other noble
men and women.

Hereabove we already saw reasons enough to make us suppose that _Tyanḍi
Mĕndut_ had been built on the ashes of the prince of the buddhistic
empire of which we don’t know anything but its having been supreme in
Central Java for at least eleven centuries ago.

These ruins stand in the village after which they have been named, along
the road leading from _Jogyåkartå_ to the _Båråbudur_, not far from the
_Magĕlang_ route, and as they are the first we reach on our way from one
of the two capitals, and generally visited, we shall therefore first
describe this most interesting grave temple.




                             Tyanḍi Mĕndut.


Leaving Jogyåkartå by steamtram or by carriage, and driving through the
dessa of _Muntilan_—properly speaking a Chinese settlement—,turning two
or three miles farther on near the stopping-place of _Kalangan_, 8 miles
south of _Magĕlang_, into a by-path leading westward to the Båråbudur,
we, within an hour, shall arrive at the real javanese village of
_Mĕndut_, which is situated on the left bank of the river _Élo_. On this
spot, as it were under the shadow of the Buddha temple, eleven centuries
old at least, a Roman Catholic mission built a little church and
parsonage, and opened a school for javanese children.

Living Christianity near the ruins of dead Buddhism!

Heavy teak wooden scaffoldings surrounded these ruins on all sides, and
on the north-western frontside solid wooden stairs lead upward till
under the _attap_[10] temporary roof. This was to protect the
Båråbudur’s pyramidical roof (at that time not yet shut off again) and
protect also the three almost undamaged gigantic images from rain and
sun-blaze. This scaffolding still appeared as a witness of _W. A. van de
Kamer_’s clever diligence. Some eleven years ago, when in Government’s
service as official for ways and roads, he got the order given to him by
choice, to begin the work of restoration, and that above his own work as
overseer in service of the Department of Public Works. Notwithstanding,
he continued for three years this enterprise trusted to him, and without
any other reward but the title of architect the diploma of which he had
already got in Netherland for many years ago. Under his command, and
without any accident, he had the heavy and badly menaced pyramidic roof
brought downward, and he succeeded in having the decaying and declining
walls erected again, and that in a manner (as I once witnessed)
unconditionally admired by competent experts, among whom I know
high-placed engineer officers. But his work became unjustly objected by
the philological president of a newly appointed Båråbudur committee he
saw suddenly placed above him (_van de Kamer_), and the pitiable manner
in which the former official induced him to ask for exemption from the
labour dear to him, and to retire from Government’s service some years
afterwards, I already explained and blamed in 1901 by means of some
non-published writings, because the latter, still subordinate at that
time, could not defence himself, and above all, because of my being
competent and obliged to do so as an honest man, loyal to the ancient
device: “_Fais ce que dois, advienne que pourra_”. Even to me this deed
became a source of misunderstanding and grief.


The first striking thing we see is that, in contravention to almost all
other buddhistic buildings, the frontage of these ruins have not been
placed opposite to the East, the sun-rise, but strange enough, opposite
to the Northwest. When I first visited this temple in 1875 I saw that
the porch which had been built before this frontage, had partly
disappeared. Only its side-walls, the greater part at least, and
fortunately, the two interesting sculptures had remained. This was also
the case with the 14 large stone steps leading from without to the same
porch, and flanked by heavy holds in the form of the _garuḍa-nâga_
ornament we are going to know by-and-by.

The colossal pyramidic roof, and part of the front wall above and north
of the entrance to the inner-room were greatly lost.

The two sculptures before the entrance show us, to the left, a princess
in a garden of fruit-trees, with a suckling at her breast, and many
playing children all round about her. And opposite to them, to the
right, we see an Indian,—_not_ buddhistic—prince with much more children
in such another garden.

All the children wear a crescent of the moon on the hind part of their
heads, but both the children and their parents miss everything that
might have spoken of a buddhistic character. The prince himself wears a
three stringed cord of a caste (_upavîta_), and is therefore
characterised as a _not_ buddhistic one. Buddhism doesn’t know any
caste.

Nevertheless, there are Dutch scholars who suppose this prince to be
_Buddha_’s father, this woman _Buddha_’s mother. Even professor _Kern_
wrote to me that this woman with her suckling should be nobody else but
_Mayâ_ with her son in _Lumbini_ garden. The Indian prince however,
remained inexplicable.

The buddhistic king of Siam, _Chula Longkorn_, gave me in 1896 another
and far better explanation which solved all difficulties, and to which
I’ll come back again after having first given a superficial description
of the gigantic images we see in this temple.

Let us therefore enter through the opened iron railing now replacing the
wooden inner door, which for more than some 70 years ago, was used
perhaps, as fire-wood.

The space before the unadorned south-easterly back-wall is occupied by a
heavy altar-shaped throne not yet long ago newly built in an exceedingly
simple style.

And on this throne sits a colossal _Buddha_ image, by no means however,
a nude one, so as professor _Veth_ wrongly wrote in his standard work:
“_Java_,” but this is dressed in the cowl of the _southern_ Buddhists
uncovering his right shoulder and arm; his two legs dangling and resting
on a small cushion with his two hands before his breast in such a
posture (_mudrâ_) as the Mahâyânists, the followers of the “_Big
Carriage_” of the _northern_ church, generally (not always) give to the
_first_ of their five _Dhyâni-Buddhas_. In Ceylon and in Farther India
however, there where _Hînayânism_ of the _southern_ church still exists,
which doesn’t know any Dhyâni-Buddha, this posture simply means
“_blessing_.”

To the right of this Buddha nearly 4 yards high, we see a _buddhistic_
prince seated on a throne abundantly decorated with nâgas, lions, and
elephants, and ornamented with lotus-cushions and feet cushions. The
monk’s hood, the bottom of which goes under the princely garb over his
left shoulder and breast, and the small _Buddha_ image in his crown
characterise him as a _Buddhist_, and that in contradistinction to the
other prince we see opposite him, to the left of the Buddha. And though
this prince also has his seat on an equally richly ornamented throne,
yet we don’t see any image in his crown, and then he doesn’t wear a
monk’s hood, but only the three-stringed _upavîta_ which characterises
him as _not_ buddhistic.

On this ground professor Kern thought this Indian prince as inexplicable
as the other one we saw in the porch before the entrance.

The two kings wear the _prabha_, or disk of light, on the back part of
their heads. _Buddha_ does not, or no more; for this may have been fixed
to the wall of the temple, and afterwards fallen down after that the
image itself had slidden from its seat, or before its having been placed
there[11].

On account of the posture of his hands before his breast there are some
Dutch scholars who suppose this _Buddha_ to be the first _Dhyâni-Buddha
Vairotyana_, and the two other princes they think to be _Bodhisattvas_
or future Buddhas, whilst the one on the north-easterly wall is said to
be the _fourth_ Dhyâni-Bodhisatthva, _Padmapâni_ because of his being
provided with a small image of the fourth Dhyâni-_Buddha_, _Amitâbha_,
in his crown.

Which Bodhisatthva we then must see in that other image nobody could
tell us, because it misses all attributes.

This however, is also the case with the buddhistic king’s image, and
though it may be provided with a Buddha image in its crown, occasionally
given to some Bodhisatthvas, yet it doesn’t characterise every wearer as
such.

Moreover, I more than once demonstrated that _all_ the crowns are
provided with no other image but the one of the Buddha himself in his
posture of _meditation_ (or rest after death), and therefore we can’t
accept these images to be Bodhisatthvas, or more especially _Padmapâni_,
the Bodhisattva of the fourth Dhyâni-Buddha who, after all, should have
been characterised by this Bodhisatthva’s usual attribute, the _padma_
or lotus placed near his face. But these two images also miss this
flower and the stem of the lotus which the Bodhisatthvas generally keep
in their _left_ hands. Sometimes however, we see them in their _right_
hand, and the flower with the symbol above one or two leaves.

So the meaning of the mentioned scholars _doesn’t explain these 3
images_ whereas Siam’s king, on his visiting this temple in 1896,
satisfactorily interpreted the north-westerly image, wearing, like he
does himself, a Buddha image in his crown, to be perhaps the king of the
buddhistic empire, under whose reign the Båråbudur was built.

Further he supposed the other image to be the latter’s not-buddhistic
father and predecessor whilst both father and son (the latter afterwards
became a buddhist), might have been honoured by their descendants who
brought together the two images in this sanctuary under the _blessing_
of the only Buddha, the redeemer of this world. So this Buddha image has
nothing to do with any _Dhyâni-Buddha_, and by no means with the _first_
of them.

    [Illustration: Tyanḍi Mĕndut.
    Imagery in front of the entrance of the ruin.
    _Hâritî_, the goddess of the _Yakshas_, with some of her 500
    children.]

This explanation of the king-Buddhist became so comprehensible and
logical to me that I could not but accept and defend it against others,
and so I came to the hypothesis that the ashes of the two kings (but
certainly the _son’s_ ashes) must have been buried in this _tyanḍi_.
Their urns may be found back again in a deep pit under the throne of the
Buddha, or under the seats of the other images, just as we had found
such urns of ashes in other tyanḍis, in square pits, under the pedestals
of the images, and generally adorned with some figures of precious metal
and provided with some coloured precious stones, the emblems of the
_seven treasures_, the _sapta ratna_ which were given to the dead.

These pits occupied the whole depth of the foundation of these temples,
under the floor of the inner-rooms which may have been intentionally
built so high above the surface of the earth. This, perhaps, is also the
reason of the heavy substructure of _tyanḍi Mĕndut_.

Had _Van de Kamer_ remained charged with the work of restoration to
these ruins the Resident of Ked̆u would then have granted us to examine
this affair more closely before the throne was rebuilt again, and the
Buddha image replaced upon it.

But this didn’t happen.

That Siam’s king declared the two images before the entrance to be the
representations of the buddhistic king’s parents with their children
seemed more than reasonable to me, especially, because of all
difficulties being solved then. Didn’t _Mayâ_, like any other mother of
Buddha, die seven days after his birth? And then, all writings known to
me, don’t mention anything about _Siddhârta_’s brothers or sisters. And
all these children can’t possibly be angels or celestials, because in
the smaller panels, above the groups in the porch, we always see them
hewn floating in the air.

However reasonable this idea of the hînayîstic king may have seemed to
me, yet I could not maintain this when I was told by Mr. A. Foucher, the
great knower of the ancient Indian Buddhism, that in Old _Gandhâra_ he
often saw the Buddha, just as is the case here, sculptured in the
_mudrâ_ of preaching, standing between the two Bodhisatthvas,
_Avalokitésvara_ and _Manjusri_. This, among others, is to be seen at
_Sârnâth_ in the northern environs of _Bénarès_ which passes for the
very place where the _Buddha_ should have preached for the first time.
This is ordinarily indicated by means of the tyakra between two
gazelles, and consequently hewn at the foot of Buddha’s throne. Mr. _A.
Foucher_ also taught me that my fellow-country-man, Dr. _J. Ph. Vogel_,
leader of the archaeological service in British India, rightly declared
the two demi-relievoes in the porch (volume 4th of the “_Bulletins de
l’école française d’Extrême-Orient_”) to be the representations of
_Hâritî_ and _Kuvera_, the goddess and the god of the _Yakshas_ with
some of their children. In many a cloister in _Gandhâra_ he saw the
Yakshî _Hâritî_ represented with one child at her breast, and that,
after she herself, who is said to have been the former personification
of small-pox (_variolae_), had been converted by the _Buddha_.

He had taken away one of her 500 children, and remonstrated with her on
the sorrow she gave the mothers of the children killed by her, in
consequence of which she totally changed her character, became truly
converted and afterwards honoured as a patroness of children.


I am not going to expatiate about the artistic value of this produce of
the ancient plastic arts in Old India. One should see them oneself and
then judge whether the Indian sculptor knew how to chisel out living
thoughts which are not less striking and beautiful than those of the
Greeks in the age of _Pericles_, and much better hewn than those of the
Egyptians in the time of the hieroglyphics, of _Memphis_ and _Thebae_,
of _Carnak_ and _Philae_[12].

But there are more things to be seen in the sanctuarium of tyanḍi
Mĕndut.

The space within the four heavy walls is not a square or rectangular
one, but rather a trapezoid with parallel front- and back walls. Its
side-walls somewhat join each other from front to back. I don’t know any
other example of deviation from the rectangular form, and therefore try
to find its meaning in the sculptor’s effort to increase the impression
the large images make upon the visitor, by slightly supporting its
perspective.

    [Illustration: Tyanḍi Mĕndut.
    Imagery in front of the entrance of the ruin.
    Kuwera, the god of riches and of the _Yakshas_, with some of his
    children.]

Two niches have been spared in each of these side walls, but not
symmetrically like we see them hewn before the impressive image-group,
and not behind it or on the back wall. Half way between the entrance and
the two corners however, two similar niches adorn the front wall. All
these six niches have been framed with the _garuḍa-nâga_ ornament, that
is, with two composed serpent’s bodies whose tails disappear into the
mule of a monstrous _garuḍa_ head we see above the vault of these
niches, and whose outward turned heads are provided with a proboscis.

In each niche there lies a small lotus cushion but without any image.
Even in 1834 during the digging up of the ruin buried under an overgrown
mound, no images were found in- or outside these niches.

What then was the meaning of them?

They were explained to us by the French Indian architect _Henry
Parmentier_ who spoke of analogical cases in Farther India [_Bulletins
de l’école française d’Extrême Orient_][13]. Even there the temples
closely related to the Hindu ruins in Java had _no_ windows or openings
outside the entrance which opened into an equally dark porch; and as it
was very dark inside the walls were provided with niches for lamps to
light the images throning in these sanctuaries.

After mature consideration I came to the conclusion that the niches of
tyanḍi Mĕndut must also have had this destination, and this may be the
reason why all of them were affixed in front and opposite (not behind)
the three images, so that I never doubted the four walls to have had
_any other opening_ than the door which opened through the front wall
into the almost equally dark porch.

This conviction of mine has been confirmed by some corresponding cases,
among others, by the fact that the four still undamaged walls of the
comparatively large inner-rooms of _tyanḍi Sévu_ in the plain of
Parambanan, have no other opening but the door which gives entrance to
the (eastern) porch. However, we don’t see any niche in the inner-room
of _tyanḍi Kalasan_, perhaps because there was room enough in these two
sanctuaries to place one or more lights before or on the altars which
carried the _Buddha_ or _Târâ_ image.

In the main temples of the _Parambanan_ group, with the exception of
_tyanḍi Shiva_, there was no place for these lights. The altar-shaped
pedestals of the images were much smaller there, and round about them
there was but little room.

This temple’s walls hewn with exquisitely modelled festoons had also no
niches, and could not have had them unless one would have partly
sacrificed its panels. But in all other, less spacious temples whose
walls were unadorned, are still to be found simple and square formed
stones, 2 of which we see in each side-wall, and 1 on every side of the
entrance through the front wall, consequently just as the 6 niches in
_tyanḍi Mĕndut_ and equally fit to the same purpose. Had not the front
walls of these sanctuaries partly fallen down I am sure we then could
see that they also had no windows above the entrances, and that neither
the inner-rooms of _tyanḍis Sévu_ and _Kalasan_, nor the sanctuary of
_tyanḍi Mĕndut_ ever had them till before some years when the president
of the “_Oudheidkundige Commissie_” (board of antiquarian science)
ordered these openings to be pierced through the front wall scarcely
rebuilt by Van de Kamer. And that, _contrary_ to this architect’s
official objections, and against my not-official but well argued
warning. An irresponsible _deforming_, a _violation_ of the original
architecture, a _desecration_ of a primevally pure style!

And this becomes much clearer to us when we raise our eyes, and fully
_see_ how this polygonal hole spoils the harmony of the character of the
pyramidical vault so beautifully thought, and which I mean to have once
known as a closed whole.

Those who contemplate this pseudo-vault unprejudicedly will no more
regret than I do, that such a thing could have happened without having
been redressed up to this date. It is true, it would cost much labour
again, and money too, but this labour and money would undoubtedly be far
better accounted for than that which was uselessly spent to commit such
an unpardonable mistake.

_Dr._ Brandes may have been deceived by the form of the hole the
dropping stones had made _outside_ in the front wall above the entrance,
and which he knew from engravings only, for, when he first visited this
temple Van de Kamer had this wall erected again just as it once was, and
without any other opening but the door. On account of analogical Indian
ruins pictured in Fournerau’s and Porcher’s works, I stated elsewhere
how the falling asunder of such walls which had been run up with hewn
stones without mortar, are to form the very same angular lines of breach
_Dr._ Brandes unrightly ascribed to the architect’s intention to build
them so.

It is true that the front wall of the inner-room of _tyanḍi Sévu_ makes
us think, from its inside at least, of such a _relievo vault_, but this
had been entirely shut off to its outside, and consequently not likely
to have ever done duty as a “light-case”[14]. Had _Dr._ Brandes taken
van de Kamer’s objections and my warning into unprejudiced
consideration, this meaning of his would not have been possible.

_Tyanḍi Mĕndut_ has the outward appearance of a quadrangle with a
somewhat rectangular wing in the centre of each of its four sides.

Consequently an icosahedral resting on an equally polygonal foundation
of larger extent. The north-western forebuilding, which reached much
farther, and formerly had been separately roofed in, contained the porch
to which a broad and fourteen-tread staircase will lead us even now.
This staircase is flanked by heavy banisters formed of composed _naga_
and _garuḍa_ heads we are going to know somewhere else.

However, among the sculptures we see on the outer-wall, Mr. M. Foucher
recognised not without some reserve the main image on the _northeast_
side as the eight-armed mahâyânistic deity _Tyundâ_ or _Tsyundâ_,
standing between the _Bodhisattvas Avalokitésvara_ and _Manjusri_; on
the wall to the _south-east_ (the hind-part thus) he thought he saw
_Avalokitésvara_ himself, four-armed, and between two _Taras_; and on
the _south-western_ side he saw _Tsyundâ_ once more, but now four-handed
and standing between the very same two _Bodhisattvas_ we see on the
north-easterly outer-wall. On the side-panels of _this_ wall he
recognised the _Bodhisattva_ _Manjusri_, on the _south-east_ side
_Vajrâpani_, the _Bodhisattva_ of the _second_ _Dhyâni-Buddha_; and on
the outer-wall to the _south-west_ he saw _Manjusri_ again, the former
with his sword and the latter with his book on a blue lotus. All the
small series sculptured on the outsides of these heavy stairs refer to
ancient legends.


The king of _Siam_ told us that in the whole of his buddhistic empire
there was only one image which, though much more damaged, could be
compared to the colossal Buddha image we see here, whilst his brother,
prince _Damrong_, called the Mĕndut Buddha _priceless_.

In 1896, and afterwards in 1901, H. M. rendered due homage to the
_Buddha_ image by a devout _sĕmbah_ (salaam) and by strewing
_sĕmboja_-flowers (_Plumeria acutifolia_ Poir) in its lap; and so did
the Queen.




                             Tyanḍi Pawon.


V.

Leaving the native village of Mĕndut behind us, crossing shortly after
the small iron bridge built over the river _Elo_, and after having been
ferried over the Praga, when a mile’s drive farther westward, we arrive
at the little dukuh of _Bråjånålå_ (or _Bråjånalan_) where we see the
very small _tyanḍi Pawon_ before our having turned into the broad
_kĕnari_-avenue which leads through the native village of _Bårå_ to the
hill of the Båråbudur. Some years ago this _tyanḍi_ had been pulled down
and afterwards rebuilt again. Its name which means “kitchen” is clear
enough to make us understand how the Javanese would have shown the
striking contrast between this small temple and the other more extensive
one, as if it were a kitchen compared with a mansion or temple.

Why then was this small ruin pulled down and afterwards rebuilt again?

It once stood there under the shadow, partly upon and among the roots of
a gigantic tree, the most beautiful _randu alas_ or “wild cotton-tree”
(_Bombax malabaricus_ D. C.) I ever saw. A whole, so strikingly
beautiful that it charmed the eyes of all who understood a little the
language of lines and forms (and colours), and of harmony and contrast.
“An image of life which kills, and rises again from death.”

In 1901 conducting the Jena professor Ernst Haeckel to this spot, when
on our journey home from the ruins of the Båråbudur, this scholar so
sensible of nature’s beauty drew this rare scene in his sketch-book, and
devoted himself for two or three hours to the contemplation of this
combined creation of art and nature.

And even to him the mutilation this majestic tree had already undergone
in its frame of roots beautifully formed by nature, seemed to be a
sacrilege _against_—just as very long ago the destruction of ancient
art—_by_ Nature. But the latter worked quite unconsciously whereas the
profaning hand of man _did not_.

I know full well the most insignificant remainders of this ancient Art
to be of great value to Science; as well as the creations of Nature; in
my opinion however, it would have been by no means necessary to fell
this gigantic tree in order to preserve this small produce of art,
though others with a less developed sense for nature’s beauty may be
inclined to think otherwise.

The architect van de Kamer, one of the two members of the former
Båråbudur Committee however, did not. He also thought it wrong to
sacrifice this tree “not because the ruin doesn’t show us anything else
we don’t know better preserved elsewhere; but because it might have been
pulled down stone by stone, and then ... rebuilt again _without_ killing
the tree itself.” That which had been hidden under the ... tree on the
north side was crushed long ago, and I therefore thought the felling
down of this tree a useless deed and _consequently_ a mistake. Attending
in 1900 the Dutch Governor-general _Roozeboom_ to these ruins we were
photographed under this tree by his adjutant the naval officer _de
Booy_, but the photographic productions soon faded. The following year I
accompanied the _Padang_ photographer C. Nieuwenhuis to _tyanḍi Pawon_
spending one night in the Båråbudur pasanggrahan (resthouse). Next day
he successfully succeeded in photographing the glorious group which
still speaks of the truth I asserted, though the tree itself has been
lost for ever.


The small ruin has some conformity to the many, almost as large grave
temples, which surround the main temple of _tyanḍi Sévu_, in Parambanan
valley, in four rectangles. Probably, also to those surrounding the
terrace of the larger ruins of the _Parambanan_ group in three
quadrangles, still, these are no truisms, because out of the 157 small
_tyanḍis_ we dug up we found nothing else but their foundations only,
and a few altar-shaped pedestals (without any escape-pipe for the
holy-water the different sculptures were aspersed with, so that these
pedestals are likely to have carried Buddha images) such as are to be
seen in the small temples of _tyanḍi Sévu_. Other ones now adorn the
premises of the residences of leaseholders living in these environs, for
instance, at the _tyanḍi Sévu_ sugar-factory.

But this conformity is not a perfect one.

A small square room with a very small porch we enter by means of some
narrow treads flanked by the _Garuḍa-Naga_ ornament, but this room is
empty and unadorned, and I haven’t known it otherwise for more than 30
years. There is only a shallow niche in each side-wall in front of the
place where once may have stood a pedestal and image.

On account of their height and breadth I estimated these niches too
shallow for an image, a long time ago, and before I knew their
destination. Just as in tyanḍi Mĕndut these niches may have been
consequently used to light the inner-part by means of little bronze or
earthenware lamps we also found elsewhere, and all this in spite of the
very small and narrow air-openings, even those in the back wall which,
though newly covered, only admit a very dim light now that the small
porch, separately roofed in, has been rebuilt and covered again even
when the two small doors remained open.

I suppose that, just as in other such tyanḍis, there must have stood in
this dark inner-room opposite to the (westerly) entrance a small cubic
pedestal without any sidelong escape-pipe, and thereupon a small image
of the Buddha or of another buddhistic greatness. Beneath there, in a
small square pit, may have been buried an urn containing the ashes of a
_guru_ or of some monk of high standing, and finally I suppose this
small mausoleum to have been built by their surviving relations who
_generally_ but not _slavishly_ kept within the provision of the
existing examples of such a style of building.

The outer-walls of this small temple have been also hewn with
demi-relievoes of _Bodhisattvas_ and _bodhi_-trees with _gandharvas_.

It is an extraordinary thing that even the entrance of this
incontestably true buddhistic temple had not been made on the east side
but to the west. But as for the small tyanḍis _Sévu_ and _Parambanan_
they also did not follow this rule.




                           Tyanḍi Båråbudur.


VI.

After having walked through the umbrageous _kĕnari_-avenue and the
village of _Bårå_ which we meet on our way when starting from the dukuh
of _Bråjånålå_, we shall arrive within half an hour at the hill upon
which we see stand the pasanggrahan, and the colossal ruin. By carriage
in less than a quarter of an hour.

The first sight of this wonder of architecture is a rather disappointing
one because, when standing at the end of the avenue, we only perceive
the outer-walls of its south-easterly angle.

But this becomes quite otherwise as soon as we have reached the top of
the hill, and got out of our carriages in front of the mentioned
pasanggrahan lying opposite the north-west corner of the ruin, but which
has been built as high as its foot. We then overlook the enormous mass
of stone gradually developing itself in majestic lines and forms, in all
the terraces, following each other in a regular range of succession till
we see rise in their centre the high cupola now covered again by a cone
with three sun-shades[15].

If we want to understand the overwhelming beauty of this ruin we must
first try to know the whole in its different parts, and best of all,
examine to what purpose this work of art had been produced by the
Buddhists of Central Java who are said to have existed there more than
eleven centuries ago.

I suppose that, when their predecessors left India for Java, they are
likely to have brought a vase or urn containing some real or pretended
ashes of the Buddha himself in order to bury them under a simple hill or
in an artless _dagob_ as soon as they had reached the place of their
settling, to render these ashes to the worship of the believers, and to
make them suppose as if this hill or cairn were the real grave of the
Master himself.

    [Illustration: The Tyanḍi Båråbudur (N. W. front).]

But after a lapse of an uncountable number of years or, perhaps some
centuries, this colony became a large and powerful empire, and—just as
the Christians first assembled in grottoes or catacombs, and afterwards
built churches rich and magnificent like St. Peter’s at Rome, and the
Cologne cathedral—the Buddhists also disregarded their simple cairn, and
wanted something better, something more worthy and beautiful, in
consequence of which they built a _dagob_ large and in solemn style,
surrounded by many gradually descending terraces, walled in and covered
with sculptures abundantly hewn, which was to speak, with the clearness
of plastic art or in the poetic language of symbolism, of the Master and
his doctrine, of the Redeemer and redemption, of life’s insufficiency
and of victory after death.[16]

He who would approach this dagob to sacrifice his flowers to the Buddha,
to meditate his life there, and perhaps, to utter his homage in a
prayer[17] was obliged to mount all these terraces, and walk along these
sculptures which became, as it were, a revival of the Buddha and his
doctrine which taught him the dissolving in the _nirvâna_, the
approaching of the infinite _not-to-be_ as the end purpose of all life,
and the deliverance of all the miseries of a sensual existence[18].

Many a sculpture reminded him there that self-conquest, self-command,
singleness and purity of heart, veracity and meekness, and the love for
all beings, either man or beast, were to lead him to that final purpose.

And if not blind with his eyes open, he reached at last the Master’s
grave in a frame of mind so pure and noble, so serious and well-meant
that the pilgrimage itself became a step on the right path.

But not always, and not to every one.

For even the impressions received there were of a transient kind, and it
may be that many a one who went there for form’s or appearances’ sake
only, remained as insensible of these impressions as he was of the
majestic vista the highest terraces displayed deep down and far off on
the surrounding mountains, valleys and plains, a view most astonishing,
and culminating in the satisfaction of mounting the ruin even at this
day.

Let us now follow the way the pilgrim took, and mount the hill which
carries this heavy mass of stone.

Standing on the small plain at its north-west corner, in front of the
_pasanggrahan_ where we now find comparatively nice accommodation, and
where once may have stood the cloister or dwelling of the monks who took
care of the _stûpa_, we overlook the whole scene: a polygonal mass of
dark-grey stone, a chaos of dome-shaped roofs and cones, of re-entering
walls and projecting frame work, crowned by a higher situated
middle-cupola the lost cone of which van Erp renewed after the copy of
found fragments, but which was afterwards removed again.

We approach and ascend the outer-terrace, a tridodecahedral or rather a
quadrangle, each side projecting twice outside in the shape of a
rectangle, and encircling the equally polygonal temple.

This terrace has nothing to do with the original style of building. For
about two yards deeper there lies another one, formerly extending three
yards farther to outside, but now for the greater part hidden under a
burden of 5500 cubic metres of stone[19].

Supposing now this lower terrace to be some two yards deeper on, we then
arrive at the (probably) original outer terrace; but as its uncovered
outer part has been lost since, we now can’t possibly ascertain its
bounds.

When, according to my schematism offered to the Dutch Government by the
board of directors of the “_Oudheidkundige Vereeniging_”, the upper
series were dug up (1890) and the _lower-part_ of the ruin’s outer wall
had been uncovered, we found there heavy frames and bands, and
underneath a series of 160 images much better hewn than the
demi-relievoes, and for the greater part well preserved under their firm
covering. Some years ago we had not the slightest idea of their
existence. I proposed the Dutch Government to have them photographed so
that they now have come within the range of the study of
archaeologists[20].

It therefore appears that the first outer-terrace must have been twice
heightened at its original foot, that is, before the last planned
imageries had been entirely finished at its foot or hardly sketched.

And this must have been done by the Buddhists themselves to assure,
perhaps, firmer foundations to the whole building[21].

But let us now return to the outer-terrace we mounted. In former times
it must have been surrounded by a heavy breast-work which now has
disappeared altogether.

In the centre of each side this parapet was replaced by the upper step
of a staircase on two sides closed in by means of heavy banisters.

The banisters of such stairs ended into _nâga_ heads with turned
elephant’s trunks and gave entrance to the lower heightening.

Out of all still existing stairs, and upon those we now find ourselves
there are other ones leading over all the higher terraces to the large
middle-dagob we can still reach along this path without being obliged to
walk all round these galleries, and without passing the imageries
standing there.

On our first way we therefore only walk about part of the outer-terrace,
along the north- and half east-side, and it is on _this_ side that we
shall mount the stair which will bring us to the very first gallery
(also walled in on its outside) on the second terrace. And we shall find
there the starting-point of _four_ different series of alto-relievoes of
which some prepare each other in regular succession.

Yet, these imageries, more or less reviving the heavy outer-wall _above_
the outer terrace, and consequently standing comparatively high above
the _lower series_ we uncovered in 1890 (now covered again) don’t tell
us any story or legend, but allude to symbolical ornaments only.

Notwithstanding, they can’t be said to be without sense, though we may
not readily understand them.

They represent numberless, but continually modified repetitions of some
motives: a man seated near an incense-offering or a flower-vase, and a
man standing between two women, nymphs or servants; both scenes every
time separated by a single woman’s image provided with a lotus or
another symbol. This lotus may refer to female _Bodhisattvas_, otherwise
I should be inclined to think of _apsarasas_ or celestials, because I
don’t see any reason for so many _Bodhisattvîs_. And yet, why not,
provided that they are not taken as personal, legendary or historical
_Bodhisattvîs_.

Don’t we also find them in other ruins (_tyanḍi Parambanan_, and _tyanḍi
Sévu_), and in the _Sari_ and _Pĕlahosan_ cloisters?[22].

And on the top of the heavy cornice covering these imageries, stand—or
formerly stood—from distance to distance, just above the sacrificers,
small temples of a completely similar form, each of them containing a
deep niche, wherein a Buddha image on a lotus-throne provided with the
_prabha_ or disc behind his head.

A square spire with screen-shaped stories reminding us of the Siam
pagodae or of some _tyaityas_ also represented on the imageries of our
temple, crowned each small temple which had been flanked by two wings
with similar but lower spires. And between every two small niche-temples
stood—or stands—, just above the groups of the three small images, an
altar-shaped stone-block, covered by a bell-shaped _dagob_ which has or
had been crowned with a conical column.

The _front_ part of each of these dagob-pedestals has been adorned with
a sitting man’s or woman’s image with a flower-vase or an
incense-offering, or with both of them.

The _back_ parts of these niche- and dagob temples formed—and they
partly still form—an (formerly) uninterrupted cornice which carried the
small spires and the dagobs, and beneath, a single wall-opening which,
following all the re-enterings of the tridodecahedral, was only
interrupted by the four doorways which showed us a repetition (on a
larger scale) of the small niche-temples.

These stairs were and _are still_ the weak points of the architecture.

Dissimilar as they are in height and depth of the steps, they sometimes
occupy the greater part of the floor of the surrounding galleries. Even
the doorways once covering them from terrace to terrace, but which now
have for the greater part disappeared, were less proportioned to the
whole, and therefore not always equally rich in style, and beauty. It
still appears from that which has remained that the side-posts of these
doorways—just as those of each niche—had been formed by the serpent’s
bodies of two _nâgas_ whose tails ended into the mule of a monster-head
we saw above the doorway. We already came across this very same motif on
our walk round the niches, and on the banisters of _tyanḍi Mĕndut_ and
_tyanḍi Pawon_, and find it back in all the Buddha temples in Java,
especially in those of the plain of _Parambanan_, and in the ruins of
the temple group of this name whose buddhistic character will not be
easily acknowledged. At the foot of the doorway (or of the niche) these
_nâga_-heads ended into outward turned mythical monster-heads which, at
first sight remind us of elephants rather than of snake-like animals,
because their upper lips generally (not always) change into a trunk
curled up on their foreheads. Wilhelm von Humboldt and after him all
European examiners, among whom the Dutch scholar Leemans, therefore took
these monstrous figures for elephant’s heads without perceiving however,
that they changed into serpent’s bodies when seen on the side-posts of
the doorways; they also didn’t see the relation there was between these
heads and the monster-head above the doorways and niches.

Many years ago I had been misguided myself, and in the beginning I even
defended my error against the king of Siam who was, for all I know, the
only one that disputed this, and H. M. succeeded in convincing me by
logical argumentation.

In this ornament the _nâga_ represents a power inimical to buddhism, and
the monster which conquers this power by crushing the enemy’s tail
should be, according to the Siam opinion, _Rahu_ who also tries to
devour the sun during every eclipse.


This is comprehensible because this _Rahu_ has always been represented
as a head only, and after that his body severed from his head by
_Vishnu_’s tyakra, had fallen into the sea and perished.

When I afterwards communicated this explanation of the royal Buddhist to
the members of the _Mission archéologique de l’Indo-Chine_, this
mission’s director (who afterwards became the first director of the
_École française d’Extrême Orient_), Mr. _Louis Finot_, the great
indo-archaeologist, (even according to professor _Kern_) thought this
monster-head didn’t represent _Rahu_ but _Garuḍa_, the destroyer of the
_nâgas_. And when I argued I had always seen this _wâhana_, god
_Vishnu_’s riding animal or eagle, represented as a bird or as man-bird
provided with wings and claws or at least with the beak of a bird of
prey, the French-Indian scholar assured me he did know _Vishnu_’s
representations seated on such a monster-head only[23].

It was _I_ who afterwards found such _garuḍa_-heads with claws of a bird
of prey (with 3 or sometimes 4 front-toes).

As for the rest _Garuḍa_ is the deity’s faithful servant, and, according
to the Buddhists of the northern church, Vishnu must have revealed
himself in their _Buddha_ for the ninth time. He is also the natural
defender of this church, and the destroyer of its subterranean enemy.

In the form of the Javanese _kĕris_ (creese) I found, for about seven
years ago, the _nâga_ mostly adorned with a proboscis and an elephant’s
lip which may be taken as an indisputable proof of the truth of our idea
about this nâga-symbol.

But we are standing, in front of the eastern staircase, or before that
which has remained of it.

    [Illustration: Northern staircase of the ruin of the _Båråbudur_,
    with the gate leading from the fourth polygonal and surrounding
    terrace to the round ones and the high middle-_dagob_. The only gate
    which has remained intact, with the _Garuḍa-Nâga_ ornament on its
    frontside.]

Even the beautiful banisters rising from above, out of a monster’s mule,
and ending in a nâga-head with trunk curled up, are no more to be
seen[24].

Eight high steps lead us to the _first_ gallery.

The very first thing we see is that the two walls are hewn with two
series of imageries richly framed, and placed above each other, whilst
it is clear to be seen that this must have been done after that these
walls had been run up from their combination of stone-blocks, and that
an uninterrupted band of exquisite festoons has been affixed above these
sculptures under the cornice of the _back_-wall.

Because of their having been modelled in relief style all these
sculptures are therefore no _basso_ but _alto-relievoes_.


The upper series of the front wall covers the somewhat declining back
parts of the mentioned niche- and dagob temples.

On the back wall we see similar temple-groups, but _all of them_, even
the small niche-temples, are crowned with dagobs and cones.

The three following and higher walls also carry such temple-groups, and
beneath the cornices of the outer-walls we see a band modified for each
wall, but always beautifully thought, and formed of elegant rosettes and
guirlandes with birds.

On the five encircling walls of the Båråbudur we see no less than 432
niches provided with Buddha-images we are going to speak about
afterwards[25].

We now turn to the left in order to begin our walk along the sculptures
of the _upper_ series of the _back_-wall.

This wall is the only one that has remained almost wholly preserved,
showing us a comparatively well explained row of following events which
give us an idea about the life of the Buddha _Siddhârta Gautama_, the
_Shâkyamuni_, from beginning to end[26].

Out of these 120 sculptures we can only give a superficial description
of a few of them that have been explained best.

Those of the lower series and of the _two_ rows on the front wall of
this gallery, and the _few_ rows of the two walls of the three following
galleries we shall pass in silence. Not yet _all_ of them have been
explained, and many a sculpture has been so badly damaged that it
doesn’t seem possible to explain them. Other ones are lost at all. That
which remained well preserved generally represents a worship of the
Buddha, of dagobs or tyaityas, of _bodhi_-trees, or perhaps of different
relics. Sometimes they also show us a distribution of viands, or other
presents, a preaching, a fable about animals or a scene from the former
lives of the Buddha as man or beast, or certain _Bodhisattvas_ or divine
predecessors of the Buddha, the Redeemer of this world[27].

Some sculptures are likely to be mere symbols. Formerly their number
amounted to more than 2000[28].

Let us begin our walk to the left of the eastern staircase in order to
return to our starting-point following the course of _the sun of the
northern hemisphere_[29], going through the South, West and North. This
order of succession regulated after this sun, we always find back on
these and other Hindu ruins; more or less a witness of the _northern_
origin of Javanese Buddhism[30].

The Siamese also followed this direction, and maintained that a walk to
the _right_ of the Buddha or the dagob, consequently with our left side
turned to it, would show our ignorance or want of respect.

For convenience’ sake, and in order to assist the visitor in finding the
few sculptures, we shall always count them from the preceding staircase
or from the first till the ninth wall-angle, and begin with the eastern
staircase.

The first scenes relate that which preceded Buddha’s life.

The fourth sculpture of the series (No. 7 of Wilsen’s pictures in Dr.
Leemans’ work), or 1 after the _first_ angle, may be, according to
Foucher, some of the many _Pratyeka-Buddhas_[31] in the park of gazelles
near Bénarès, and, when a deity informs them the birth on earth of a
consummate _Buddha_, one of them rises from his lotus-throne in order to
be burned by his own shine and ascetic diligence when seven elbows
higher in the air. The former explanation given by Leemans and myself,
according to Wilsen’s, was inaccurate.

Further towards the South we meet more than one representation of
Buddha’s parents, the _Shâkya_ king of _Kapilavastu_, _Shudhódana_, and
his first wife _Mâyâ_, honoured for the coming event, the next birth of
the divine son.

The _twelfth_ (23 W. L., 1 after the _fourth_ angle) is a symbolical
indication of Buddha’s descent from heaven in a palanquin moved on in
the air by celestials.

The _thirteenth_ (25 W. L., 2 after the _fourth_ angle) shows us _Mâyâ_
asleep, guarded by female servants, receiving the Buddha in a dream, in
the shape of a white elephant carried by lotus-cushions, descending from
heaven into her lap[32].

The _twenty-seventh_ (53 W. L. _eighth_ angle, 1) shows us _Mâyâ_ on her
journey to her paternal home. According to time-honoured usage she goes
there to wait for her confinement. However, she doesn’t come any farther
than _Lumbini_ garden, and the following sculpture (55 W. L. angle
_nine_, 1) tells us how she, while standing there under a tree, saw the
Buddha born from her side, and how the latter _immediately took seven
steps to each of the four zones of heaven, and as many steps to the
zenith_, and that as a sign of his next authority over the _five_ parts
of the world[33].

A rain of lotus flowers falls upon him, and lotus-plants open themselves
under his feet on each step he takes. The crescent of the moon on the
hind part of his head must refer to his heavenly or perhaps princely
origin[34].

On the following sculptures we see the young king’s son, most times on
his father’s knees, honoured by brahmins and laymen. His mother is no
more to be seen, because she (as every Buddha-mother) died seven days
after his birth.

The thirty-first sculpture (61 W. L., 1 after the southern staircase)
may refer to the brahmin who perceives the Buddha-tokens at Siddhârta’s
body, and predicts his next greatness; however, in quite another sense
than the king wishes.

On 77 and 79 (W. L., angle _two_, 5 and 6) we perceive similar scenes,
but this happens more after all.

The _forty-ninth_ (97 W. L., angle _five_, 4) on the westside sketches
us Siddhârta’s authority over others, and also as for manly strength. In
a wedding match (_svayamvara_) he bends a bow no other can bend, and
sends his arrow through seven cocoa trees. On this ground he gains the
hand of his cousin Rashodara, the most beautiful girl of all Shâkya
virgins[35].

Four other sculptures refer to the four encounters outside the palace,
which, in spite of paternal precautions, showed him life’s misery. What
then would be the use of these precautions to celestial beings who only
revealed themselves to him, and to his equerry and guide in order to
persuade the next Buddha in giving up all worldly greatness and domestic
happiness; in leaving his father and family, and gaining strength in a
life of retirement, of privation and expiation, of self-denial and
self-command in order to finish his heavenly task: the redemption of
suffering mankind!

Outside the _eastern_ gate he first comes across a decrepit grey-head
(111 W. L., 6 after the _seventh_ angle); afterwards, on his drive from
the _southern_ gate, he meets a sick one in death-struggle (113 W. L.,
angle 8, 1); and when he finds himself outside the _western_ entrance a
corpse shows him the end of life (115 W. L., angle _nine_, 1), and
finally, outside the _northern_ gate, a mendicant friar or _bhikshu_
teaches him as how to gain the victory over life and death, and find
peace by ruling all carnal desires (117 W. L., angle _nine_, 2).

On the sixty-first sculpture (121 W. L., 1 after the _western_
staircase) he discusses his resolution with his disappointed father. The
sleeping watchmen or servants refer to the night which passes on
discussing the subject.

On the two following sculptures (123 and 125 W. L., 2 and 3 after the
staircase) he communicates his resolution to his wife (or wives), and
his meditating posture, but also the larger disc of light crowning the
higher seat upon which, among sleeping women and servants, he is
watching the last night, all this speaks of the holy task of life which
raises him for ever above his family.

The following scene (127 W. L., 1 after the _first_ angle) tells us,
how, in spite of closed doors and sleeping gate-keepers, he succeeds in
leaving house and home to begin abroad the life of a poor wanderer
seated on the noble sun-horse Kanthaka. The lotus-cushion carrying him
again, just as it happened when he descended to earth, and which, on the
next sculptures (129 W. L., 1 after the _second_ corner) also carries
Kanthaka through the air, speaks once more of his heavenly sending.

Then come the leave-takings from his servant Tyhanda (131 W. L.,
_second_ angle, 2), and the taking off his princely garb (133 W. L.,
_second_ angle, 3), his hair-dress and weapons (135 W. L., _second_
angle 4 and following ones), and shabbily clothed in a hunter’s
skirt—his first cowl turned yellow by long usage—he begins the life of
the thinking ascetic whose sanctifying power we see continually
indicated by the lotus-cushion and the disc of light.

Mâra, the wicked spirit of darkness, vainly tries to check him by
offering him the dominion over the four parts of the world (the East,
South, West, and North)[36].

Far from his native town Siddhârta already began his new life which
henceforth gave him claim to the name of the _wise Shâkya_
(Shâkya-muni)[37].

The following sculptures show us the penitent clothed as _Buddha_ with
the _urna_ and the _tiara_, the ring of hair on his forehead, and the
knot of hair on his crest, with the lotus-cushion and disc of the sun
worshipped by princes and inferior people, by priests and laymen, men,
women and celestials.

On the _seventy-second_ sculpture (141 W. L., angle _three_, 1) we see
him ask for being instructed by the wise brahmin Alara who is unable to
teach his wiser superior[38]. The _Shâkya_’s superiority appears from
his Buddha posture and his lotus-throne.

On the now following one [143 W. L., 1 after the _fourth_ angle] we see
him near another wise person, called Udraka[39], and as this one also
turns out to be his inferior he leaves him accompanied by _five_ of his
[Udraka’s] disciples.

On the following one [145 W. L., 2 after the _fourth_ angle] he
approaches _Rajargriha_[40], the capital of the empire of _Magadha_. Its
king Bimbisâra and the queen come to visit him, and offer him half their
empire, but the Bodhisattva doesn’t seek for worldly greatness.

The two first scenes on the north side [151 and 153 W. L., _fifth_
angle, 1 and 2] place him and his five followers on the banks of a
brook, vainly trying to seek strength [for wisdom] in a life of
abstinence and penitence. He therefore breaks with that life and with
his disciples, who wrongly suppose him an apostate and leave him alone
to continue elsewhere their lives of penitence. Six years of misery
convinced the wise _Shâkya_ that a sound spirit can live in a sound body
only.

The sculptor of these scenes incorrigibly hewed the disciples’ dislike
in their Master’s changed opinion, which is to be seen in their
spokesman’s posture. The hands of this man are a masterpiece of
expression. It would be a loss never to be remedied if these hands were
taken away, which, after all, would be of no value to the robber because
they can’t give back the proportion to their arms and bodies. Nothing,
however, is safe from the rapaciousness of foolish tourists-compilers.

The _eighty-first_ sculpture [161 W. L., angle _seven_, 1] teaches us
how Sujâtâ, the daughter of a village headman, takes care of the
penitent, almost dying from exhaustion, and how she refreshes him with
nutritive milk.

We see an almost similar representation on the _eighty-fourth_ sculpture
[167 W. L., angle _seven_, 4]. Such repetitions are more to be seen,
though they are rare ones.

The _Shâkya_ _Muni_ accomplished his purpose at last. He got all
knowledge, and truth became his power. He has ripened to appear as
_Buddha_, the _Enlightened_, the _awaking luminary celestial_, to come
in the world wrapped in darkness, to teach the true doctrine, the
_dharma_, and redeem mankind from sin.

Seated on a heap of bulrush, under a fig-tree, afterwards sanctified as
the _tree of knowledge_, the _bodhidruma_, he fights his last fight
against the Evil Spirit which he knows to conquer once more; and the
latter budges from his side for ever.

On the _ninety-fourth_ sculpture [187 W. L., the first after the _first_
angle after the _western_ staircase] we see how the weapons of demons or
false deities fall upon him as harmless flowers. A second and larger
disc speaks of his increasing power, the magnificence of the sun rising
in full glory.

The following sculpture (189 W L., after the _second_ angle) tells us
how Mâra tries to conquer him by the charmingness of his daughters, the
_apsarasas_ (the rosy morning-mists) (Kern). But though one of these
nymphs adopts the shape of Yashódarâ, Râhula-_mata_ (the mother of
Râhula, Siddhârta’s son), he henceforth lives a life of _love_ highly
beneficial to all beings.

Teaching and honoured he goes to _Banaras_ (_Bénarès_) such as the last
sculptures on the north side will show us.

On the _one hundred and seventeenth_ (233 W. L., _eighth_ angle, 1) he
proclaims truth to the five disciples found back, and now for ever his
faithful followers and first apostles[41].

The three last sculptures of the whole series which bring us back again
to our starting-point near the eastern staircase, speak of Buddha’s
greatness, but don’t refer to his journey to the native-town and to the
reclaiming of father and son, of his wife and step-mother, the first
buddhistic nuns. The last sculpture but one (237 W. L., 2 after the
_ninth_ and _last_ angle) speaks of his death, for the washing of his
corpse hewn there, may only apply to his _death_, though the sitting
posture of the dead one may seem in flat defiance of this.[42] But this
posture on the lotus-throne, with his two hands in his lap, is the
posture of meditation or perfect rest suiting the _nirvâna_ which is
also the posture of the fourth _Dhyâni-buddha_, Amitâbha, hewn on the
four lower-walls and dominating there the West, opposite to the setting
sun speaking in a symbolical sense of the finished task of life.

Behind the dead one we see stand two _monks_ pouring their vases to
purify the corpse before the cremation will make an end to his material
existence.

On the last sculpture (239 W. L., 3 after the _last_ angle) the Buddha
thrones in the very same posture, as the glorification of death, as the
immortal _Talhâgata_ who, in spite of his material death, continues to
live in his holy doctrine, and who can never die as such.

That the study of Foucher’s work could also assist me in finding the
sense of some other not comprehended sculptures may appear from the 5^th
panel after the 7^th angle past the eastern staircase, which shows us
the killing of Siddhârta’s elephant by his angry nephew Dervadatta.


VIII.

When, for more than thirty years ago, I began to study the majestic
ruin, I thought (like I afterwards wrote[43] in my first essay about the
Båråbudur) many other imageries, at least those of the undermost series
of the back wall, and those of the uppermost row on the front wall of
this first gallery, to be the representations of Buddha’s former lives,
of the jâtakas of the man honoured by all the Buddhists of the northern
and the southern church as the Redeemer of this world, the Dhyâni-Buddha
of the Mahâyânists, for the last time reincarnated for about 25
centuries ago, and who enjoyed the rest of the nirvâna after having
finished his heavenly task, but in order to reveal himself once more to
a future world, that is, as the Redeemer of not yet existing beings.

When in July 1896 I attended the king of _Siam for three days on his
journey to the ruins_, this royal Buddhist expressed the same
supposition, especially with regard to the lower series on the back wall
of this first gallery.

But I could not possibly study these _jâtakas_ as long as I didn’t know
any translation of the original _sanscrit-_ or _pâli_ text[44] in one of
the languages known to me.

In 1893 professor J. S. Speyer published in the “_Bydragen van ’t
Koninklijk Instituut_” an English translation of 34 of these legends
derived from a sanscrit manuscript, the so-called Jâtakamâla or the
_wreath of birth stories_[45].

And in the same “_Bijdragen_”, but in those of 1897, professor Kern gave
a translation of an essay which had appeared from the hand of the
Russian Orientalist Sergius E. Oldenburg—as far as it concerned the
Båråbudur—who discussed the representations of a few _jâtakas_ on
different monuments whereas Dr. _Kern_ had been so kind as to inform me
of them by letter.

It therefore became possible for me to recognise in the two mentioned
series some of the legends treated in Speyer’s _Jâtakamâlâ_, and
moreover, show some other ones elsewhere.

And five years ago Speyer gave at length a full account of the
_Maitrakanyaka_ legend superficially treated by Oldenburg, and hewn on
six sculptures of the _lower_ series on the back wall. Oldenburg
however, had only mentioned five of them.

In November 1899 I visited the Båråbudur in order to examine all these
sculptures one by one, that is, in as much as they still existed and had
not been lost or damaged, or no more to be recognized since the
engravings studied by Oldenburg had been drawn in Leemans’ work.

It is a pity that these drawings are not exactly true ones, and not to
be relied upon, but we shall afterwards speak about them.

As short as possible I shall successively treat these sculptures,
mentioning again their numbers they refer to when counted from the
preceding staircase, and afterwards from the first till the ninth
reentering or projecting wall angle, and begin again from the _eastern_
staircase, and walk towards the South. Doing this I’ll have to count in
the disappeared and consequently _missing_ sculptures—and many of them
have been lost on the front wall—, because otherwise the numbers after
each new loss would become quite worthless. _Corner_-sculptures are
those which occupy the two sides of a wall angle, in Leemans’ engravings
divided in two by a perpendicular line.

Let us begin with the upper series on the front wall after the _eastern_
staircase.

_Second_ corner, 3, 4 and 5 (W. L., 16, 17, and 18.)[46].

The Lord once lived as a _rich man_ who did much good. One day rising
from table to fill the beggar’s bag of a monk, Mâra, the Evil Spirit,
opened a precipice before his feet wherein he saw hell flaming. But the
Lord steps through this precipice, remains uninjured, and favors the
monk, in reality a _Pratyéka-Buddha_, a heavenly saint, with a gift and
the latter afterwards disappears in a brilliant cloud.

On 3 we see the benefactor with his gifts, on 4 he steps through hell,
and on 5 the monk ascends to heaven.

Hell is represented here by condemned persons in a cauldron with boiling
contents.

_Second_ corner 11 and 12 (W. L. 24 and 25). The _Bodhisattva_ once
lived as a hare in a wilderness frequented by many hermits. Her
authority over all other animals was honoured even in heaven.

In order to put her to the test, Indra, the god, descends to her in the
shape of an exhausted traveller. An otter brings him fish, a jackal
presents him with a lizard and a cup of sour milk (left behind by
another traveller), and a monkey favors him with juicy fruit to refresh
the man. But the hare who could give nothing else but bitter grass flung
herself into a fire (burned by Indra’s will) in order to be taken by the
poor man as roasted food. But now Indra shows himself again in his
divine shape, saves the hare out of the flames, and carries her to
heaven in order to adorn his own palace, and that of the _dévas_, and
also the moon, with the hare’s picture[47].

On 11 the animals carry their presents to _Indra_, and on 12 the hare is
going to fling herself into the fire.


_Second_ corner, 18, the corner-sculpture and 1 and 2 after the _third_
corner (W. L., 31, 32, 33 and 34).

The Lord as a _king_ of a happy people. Five _yakshas_ (demons),
expelled from _Kuvera_’s kingdom, the subterranean god of riches, come
to tempt him in order to ruin him. They ask him for a good meal, but
refuse the best things the king offers them, and demand human blood and
human flesh.

The Lord doesn’t wish to let them go unsatisfied, but he is not inclined
to sacrifice one of his subjects, and therefore offers them his own
blood and flesh in spite of his ministers’ and courtiers’ resistance.

The demons reclaim themselves and acknowledge the king’s holiness, he
then admonishes them not to do wrong in future, but only that which is
good (also, among others, to leave off drinking intoxicants).

Indra descends from heaven to praise the Lord and to close his wounds.

On 18 and on the corner-sculpture the _yakshas_ come across a herd who
praises the king’s virtues. On 1 and 2 we see them near the king.

These five _yakshas_ were afterwards reincarnated men, and became the
first disciples who followed and left again the _Shakya-muni_ in order
to join the _Buddha_ once more, and to become his first apostles[48].

_Fourth_ corner, 3, 4 and 5 (W. L. 37, 38 and 39). Now the Buddha of
after life was king _Samjaya_’s son and hereditary prince.

One day, riding his white elephant, he met with some brahmins who asked
him, in the name of their king, for the elephant. He dismounts and gives
them the noble animal.

On account of this foolish deed he saw himself driven away by his father
who acted at the instigation of his (the father’s) courtiers.

He mounts his carriage accompanied by Madrî, his wife, and their two
children, and then sets off. Once more some brahmins come to ask him for
his fine horses. The prince gives his consent, and puts himself before
the carriage. Another brahmin appears now, and demands this carriage;
Madrî and the children get out, and the prince takes his little son on
his, and the mother takes their little daughter on her arm to continue
their journey afoot.

Trees bend their branches in homage, lotus-ponds refresh, and clouds
overshadow them, and so they reach their place of exile where they find
a tabernacle built for them by Indra.

One day, when Madrî found herself in the wood to seek for roots and
fruit for their meal, there came a brahmin demanding from her husband
the two little ones in order to lead them away as bound slaves.

An earth-quake calls Indra’s attention, and when the deity hears the
cause of this he also comes, as a brahmin, to the now childless father,
and claims the latter’s wife, the disconsolate mother.

But as the prince is also inclined to comply with this demand of his,
Indra reveals himself and gives him back all that which he lost. Even
his place at his father’s court.

On 3 we see him cede his elephant, and the children have been hewn on 4.
On 5 the _yakshas_ conduct the princely carriage after having put out
the horses.


_Fifth_ corner, 1, 2, 3 and 4 [W. L., 48, 49, 50 and 51].

Time was when the Lord himself was a _king_ to whom one of his subjects
offered his most beautiful daughter. At the advice of his courtiers sent
to her, fearing that the king would become crazy of love for such an
strikingly beautiful woman, he declines the offer after which she
marries one of his officials. One day taking a drive the king saw her,
and took a passionate love to her. On his being informed that she had
already entered upon marriage he controls his passions, and even refuses
to get her from the hands of her own husband, because he places his
feelings of justice above his personal happiness.

On 1 the offer is being delivered to the king; on 2 his messengers visit
the virgin; on 3 they give the prince a full account of the state of
things, and on 4 the king meets her himself.


_Fifth_ corner. 5 [W. L., 52].

As a retired old _sailor_ the Lord, though almost blind, allowed himself
to be gained into embarking for a commercial journey in order to assure
the ship a safe voyage.

A heavy storm flung the ship far away, and through unknown seas till
near the end of the world. Return again was impossible and their ruin
seemed to be inevitable. One means only could save them, and they prayed
the deities for help for the sake of the Lord’s spotless virtue and love
of truth. And this succeeded.

The storm abated, and they could return to the harbour. On their journey
home through an emerald-green sea, the blind sailor, seeing with the
eyes of other passengers, told them to pull up sand and stones from the
bottom of the sea, and take them on board by way of ballast. On their
arrival into the harbour this appeared to be precious stones and jewels.

The only remained sculpture shows us the merchants with their ship on
the open sea.


_Fifth_ corner, 9 and 10 [W. L., 56 and 57].

We here see the Lord as a _fish_ obeyed by all other fishes of the lake.
Because of want of rain this lake once dried up, and became a little
pool in which the fish didn’t know any means to escape from the birds of
prey. The _Bodhisattva_ prayed Indra for rain as a reward for his true
virtue, and the deity himself came to him, and it rained as fast as it
could pour, and Indra promised that the very same spot would be never
tried again by such a plague.

The first sculpture represents the fishes in the lake before, and the
other one, after the rain.


_Fifth_ corner, 11 [W. L. 58].

A young _sparrow_—it was the _Bodhisattva_—who despised all little worms
and insects—was outdistanced by the other young of the paternal nest.
When on the occasion of a forest-fire all other animals fled away he
only remained behind, because he could not fly. Praying he knew to
persuade the fire-god Agni into going off. Since that day every
forest-fire died out on this spot.

We see the young sparrow on the nest whilst the other birds fly away in
all directions, and while all other animals give way for the fire.


_Fifth_ corner, 12 [W. L. 59].

It once happened that the Lord descended from heaven in the shape of
Indra[49] in order to convert a king, _Sarvamitra_, who daily drank too
much strong liquor with his courtiers. As a _brahmin_ Indra now offers
the king a bottle of _sûra_ praising the pernicious properties of this
drink in so eloquent a manner that the prince renders homage to the
preacher as a _guru_ (teacher), after which the latter admonishes him to
fear drinking that he might afterwards live with him in heaven.

The sculpture needs no further interpretation.


_Seventh_ corner, 3, 4, 5 and 6 (W. L. 65, 66, 67 and 68).

In the primeval forest the Lord once lived, as a _brahmin_, a life of
severe penitence with six brothers and one sister. Only every fifth day
they came together in his hut to hear him proclaim the doctrine. As for
the rest they didn’t see each other. Every day their two servants put
the eight portions of lotus-stems on the leaves of the lotus, and
according to their age they came one by one to fetch their sober meal in
order to take it in their own hut.

Indra, putting the Bodhisattva to the test, took away the first portion
during five following days so that the Lord was obliged to fast. On the
next service the others assembled again, and saw how their brother had
grown thin. Being informed of the cause of it everyone wished the thief
to be punished in a fitting manner, and even three strange auditors, a
_yaksha_, an elephant, and a monkey cursed the thief, every one of them
in his own manner. The Lord, returning good for evil, hopes that this
one and the other that suspected one of them, wrongly perhaps, may live
to see all his wishes fulfilled. But then Indra comes, and accusing
himself he says why he did so—and humbles himself before the Lord whom
he wishes to serve as his superior.

On 3 and 4 we see the hermits in the wood. On 5 is to be seen the
lotus-pond with the servants seeking for leaves and stems, and on 6 we
see Indra humbling himself before the Lord.[50]


_Seventh_ corner, 11, 12 and 13 [W. L. 73, 74 and 75].

Another time the Lord, a rich brahmin, left everything he possessed, and
accompanied by his wife, who didn’t wish to leave him, he went to the
woods to live there a hermit’s life.

There they were found by the king who came in this region to chase, and
touched as he was by the woman’s beauty he ordered her to be kidnapped
and carried away to his _zenana_.

In spite of her cry for help her husband doesn’t oppose himself against
this robbery, and when the king asks him why he does not the brahmin
answers with an oration about the virtue of self-command, and he
therefore compels the king to honour him as an ascetic and to ask his
pardon.

On 11 we see the brahmin and his wife on their way to the wood; on 12
the hunting king, and on 13 the woman’s abduction.


_Seventh_ corner, 15, 16, and 17 and the _eighth_ corner, 1 (W. L., 77,
78, 79 and 81).

In the lake of Mânasa the Bodhisattva once ruled as a king over many
hundreds of thousands of swans, and was assisted by his viceroy Sumukha.
Their praise sounded till the court of the king of _Bénarès_ who desired
to meet the two swans. He therefore ordered another lake to be made in
the neighbourhood of his court-capital which was much more beautiful
than the first mentioned, and promulgated everywhere that he should
guarantee the safety of all birds who came to visit the new lake.

The swans of _Mânasa_ went there in spite of their ruler’s objections,
and so the Lord himself was obliged to follow them.

Shortly after he saw himself caught by the king’s hunter, and all other
swans flew away with the exception of Sumukha however, who would not
leave the Lord. The bonds which tied him to his king were stronger than
those which kept the king in his trap, he said, and he demanded the
hunter to bind him first, and afterwards release his master.

This touched the hunter and releasing both of them the Lord now requests
him to speak with the king to persuade the latter not to punish, but to
reward his hunter. This happens, and the king offers rich presents to
the two swans they decline, and now all the swans return to their lake.

This lake with the swans has been hewn on 15. On 16 the king is informed
of these birds. On 17 we see how the Lord is caught whilst all the other
swans fly away with the exception of one of them.

The following sculpture after the eighth corner, which represents the
meeting with the king, is almost wholly lost, the other one is lost at
all.


_Ninth_ corner, 5, 6, 7 and 8 [W. L., 90, 91, 92 and 93].

Another king once pursued a _sharabha_ [a strong kind of stag], and fell
from his horse into a cleft over which the wild beast had easily jumped,
but before which the horse started back in full run. The _sharabha_
descends into the cleft in order to rescue the fallen man, and help him
on his way home after having admonished him to persevere in all princely
virtues.

The chasing king we see on 5; on 6 the hunter stands on the brink of the
cleft, on 7 we see the stag [the Lord] run to assist the fallen man, and
on 8 the latter bids his rescuer farewell.


_Southern_ staircase, 2, 3, 4 and 5 [W. L. 95, 96, 97 and 98].

In another life the Master ruled as a _ruru_ [another kind of stag] over
all other wild animals. One day he rescued a traveller out of a swollen
mountain-stream, and for his only reward he wished the saved man to be
silent about the event.

Now the queen, whose dreams had never turned out to be false ones, had
dreamed of a stag who preached the doctrine sitting on a throne. The
king therefore offered a rich reward to him who could show him this
miracle of an animal.

The drowned person was a poor fellow, and breaking his promise, he led
the king into the wood and showed him the _ruru_, but doing this the
hand which had served him to indicate the animal, fell from his arm as
if it had been cut by a sword.

The stag now asked the king who had conducted him there, the prince
mentions his guide’s name, and when the _ruru_ recognises and reproaches
him his breach of faith, and whilst the king has the intention to shoot
at the man, the noble animal sues the weak man’s mercy who had by his
own fault recklessly lost his welfare in this, and in a future world.

The king pardons the guilty one and conducts the stag to his palace, and
throning there the _ruru_ preaches the law of love before the whole
court.

The animals in the wood have been hewn on 2; on 3 the drowned person is
rescued; the king meets the stag on 4, and the preaching stag has been
hewn on the 5th sculpture.


_Southern staircase_, 6, 7, 8 and 9 [W. L. 99, 101, 102 and 103].

The Buddha of after life once ruled as king over a troop of _monkeys_ in
the _Himâlaya_. They lived in a fig-tree, abundant with fruit, situated
on the bank of a brook. In order not to make the tree known by its
delicious fruit the king ordered his people not to have a single fruit
ripened on the branches which hung over the water.

Once upon a day such a fruit unperceivedly ripened fell into the stream,
and drove away to an open spot in the wood, where the king and his wives
were fishing.

Never before had the prince seen or tasted such a fine and nice fruit,
and so he went up-stream to look for the tree.

Seeing the many monkeys he told his hunters to drive them away. But in
order to take to flight the animals had to risk a leap no one but their
ruler only ventured to undertake. He jumps, reaches the mountain-slope
situated on the other side, and seeks there for a long _bambu_ which
enables him to return to the tree. Armed with this he forms with his own
body a bridge over which all the monkeys know to escape at the cost of
the Lord who sees his skin torn to bloody pieces by the monkeys’ toes.

This happens to the astonishment of the hunters who now catch up the
swooning king of monkeys, and lay him upon a bed of leaves. He soon came
to, and when the king interrogates him the Lord answers that he did his
_duty_, because a prince should _serve_ his subjects, and not let
himself served by them.

On the 6th and 7th sculpture the king accepts the fig, on 8 he and his
hunters go in search of the tree, and on 9 has been hewn the wonderful
escape of the monkeys.


_Southern staircase_, 10 and the corner-sculpture [of the _first_ angle]
[W. L. 103 and 104].

The Lord once lived in a wood as an _ascetic_ and taught patience to all
who visited him.

It then came to pass that the king and his wives came into this wood to
amuse themselves, and while the latter took a bath in a brook, which ran
there, the former fell asleep.

Awaking he didn’t see them any more. They had strayed to the hermit and
listened to his preaching. The king found them there, and angrily called
the preacher a liar, and menaced him with his sword. The wise man
however, remained calm, and the king, embittered as he was by his wives’
supplications, came up to the pious teacher, and cut his hands, ears,
nose and feet.

The martyr, who only feared that the king could be said to have killed
an innocent person, suffered much more from his sorrow for the king’s
fall than from his own wounds, but when the evildoer left the dying man
he saw the ground opening itself before him, and fell into the flaming
depth.

The frightened courtiers thought that the preacher himself had punished
their master, and they asked for mercy, and dying the poor man blessed
them, and also the murderer whose ruin had remained unknown to him.

On 10 we see the king asleep, on the corner-sculpture we see him go off
to seek for his wives. I suppose the first and 2^nd sculpture behind the
corner [W. L. 105 and 106] refers to the widows on their way home.


_Second_ corner, 5 [W. L., 111].

This sculpture brings us again in the presence of a king, the
unbelieving prince of _Videha_, who lived a life of unjustice renouncing
all virtues. There was a time when the Lord lived as a _devarshi_ [a
wise one among the celestials] in the _Brahmâloka_, and descended to
earth to convert the unbelieving ruler.

As sure—he says—as this life has been preceded by other lives there will
once come other future lives. He then speaks about the tortures of hell
which fall to the evil-doer and unbeliever when he doesn’t mend his
life, and ... the king acknowledges that he is in the right, and bids
the Lord to lead him henceforth on the right path[51].

The sculpture need no further explication.


_Second_ corner, 6, 7, 8 and 9 [W. L., 112, 113, 114 and 115].

Seven hundred astrayed and exhausted travellers meet on their way an
elephant, the _Bodhisattva_. They had been expelled from their country
with 300 others who had died on the way.

By means of his trunk the elephant shows them the way to a stream where
to quench their thirst and near which they will find a dead elephant
whose meat will feed them. Along a shorter cut he speeds to the
indicated spot, runs headlong into the bottom of a ravine and was
smashed.

It is on this spot that the hungry wanderers find his dead body, and
angels descend from heaven to sing his praise.

On 6 the exiles come across the elephant; on 7 we see them on their way
to the place pointed out to them; on 8 the elephant is ready to fall
into the precipice, and on 9 the saved ones worship the ashes of their
rescuer.

I suppose this homage to the ashes closed in a _tyaitya_, as if it were
to indicate a preceding cremation, should be taken in a symbolical sense
only.


_Second_ corner, 10, 11, 12 and 13 [W. L., 116, 117, 118 and 119].

This is one of the most important _jâtakas_.

As Sutasoma, a _king’s son_, the Bodhisattva was once walking with his
wives in the garden of his palace when there entered a brahmin whom they
invited to deliver a harangue about virtue. This harangue was
unexpectedly interrupted by the arrival of a monster who put all of them
to flight, that is, with the exception of the prince himself. Another
king had formerly procreated this monster by a lioness; most times he
lived of human flesh only. Persecuted as he was by his own subjects
after his father’s death he called in the aid of the demons and promised
them a sacrifice of one hundred king’s sons. He now came to carry off
Sutasoma to add him to the princes he already apprehended.

Sutasoma resolves to follow the lion’s son in order to convert him and
to rescue the imprisoned princes. But on his arriving at the den of the
violent monster he remembers that he left the brahmin unrewarded, and
that he hasn’t wholly heard the latter’s preaching, and so he asks for
permission to do that which he neglected; afterwards the man-eater could
dispose of him.

The latter who has already gathered his 100 princes after all, releases
his prisoner hoping to rejoice afterwards at the man’s fall as a person
false to his word.

But after having heard and presented the brahmin with gifts Sutasoma
returns to the lion’s son in spite of his parents’ and wives’
supplications. Has not the lion’s son become his benefactor by allowing
him to do his duty? On this ground he has a right to his commiseration
and to be released from the curse resting on him by birth.

And when the astonished robber asks him what this brahmin did say the
prince delivers so eloquent a harangue about law that the lion-man
converts himself and puts all his prisoners at liberty to follow them to
Sutasoma’s residence.

On 10 we see the prince with the brahmin; on 11 the former is carried
away by the robber; 12 refers to the continuation of the preaching, and
on 13 has been hewn the reclaiming of the lion-man.


_Second_ corner, 14, 16 and 17 _third_ corner, 2 (W. L. 120, 122, 123
and 127).

Once upon a day the Lord was born as the _son of a king_ whose elder
sons had died young. In order to withdraw him from the influence of the
demons the newborn son was educated in an iron house (_ayogriha_).

Once driving through the residence the young man saw much that set him
thinking; he saw how old age, sickness and death threatened everyone
while storms, inundations and fire destructed their properties. Returned
at home he resolves to part from the world and to live in the wilderness
as a hermit and penitent, and to ask his father’s consent. All that
lives, is from the moment of being in mother’s womb, doomed to death, is
not it? And all that lives kills to save life, but nobody can kill
death. Even the angels and _devas_ can’t.

His father asks him whether this death will not catch him in the
wilderness as sure as anywhere, but agreeing he says that death can’t
find him unfit to the preparation for the transition in a future life.

The father agrees at last, and the prince devotes his further life to
the dhyâna, the holy meditation which will lead him to the _brahmâloka_.

The prince’s birth has been hewn on 14; 16 shows us the brahmin’s homage
to the new-born; 17 represents the drive outside the palace, and 2 after
the following corner describes the prince’s life in the wilderness.

Besides, I suppose the corner-sculpture and the first behind the corner
(W. L., 124 and 126) to refer to the prince’s leave-taking from his
father and wives, just as it afterwards happens with Siddhârta.[52].
Striking is the conformity of this life with that of the king’s son of
_Kapilasvastu_.


_Fourth_ corner, 2, 3 and 5 (W. L., 129, 130 and 132).

Living in the primeval forest as a strong _buffalo_ the Buddha of after
life was continually teased by a monkey who, taunting the wild animal’s
inexhaustible kindness, perpetually came in his way.

A _yaksha_ admonishes the bull to be less patient and to crush or thrust
down the snarer, but the strong one answers that the monkey can’t be
otherwise than he now is, and that they should bear him as he is. There
is no better exercise in meekness than suffer a bad treatment patiently,
and by which one may hope to set the snarer thinking, and make him turn
from sin.

On 2 we see the bull and the monkey, on 3 we also perceive the _yaksha_,
and on 5 the bull delivers his harangue to the demon, and know to
persuade him into acknowledging and praising virtue[53].


_Fourth_ corner, 6, 7, 8 and 9 (W. L., 133, 134, 135 and 136).

The Lord once living in the wilderness as a _wood-pecker_ came across a
lion who suffered unbearable pains because of a piece of bone which had
remained in his throat. The wood-pecker relieved his pains by putting a
piece of wood into the opened mule, and by getting the bone out of the
throat.

A long time afterwards flying round and almost starving from hunger the
wood-pecker met the lion again who was regaling himself on an antelope,
he had just killed.

After a moment’s hesitation his former rescuer begs him for a little bit
of the antelope’s meat, but the lion asks the beggar whether he is tired
of life, and whether he ought not to be thankful that his life was
spared when he formerly ventured himself into the inquirer’s mule. A
lion doesn’t know any commiseration.

Ashamed the wood-pecker flies away. A sylvan deity follows him, and asks
why he doesn’t pick the lion’s eyes, and takes as much of the prey as he
likes. And the bird answers with a glorification of virtue; he who does
good will find his reward in a future life, but he who returns evil for
evil will lose the merit of all his good deeds.

The deity praises the wood-pecker as a wise one, a saint, and
disappears.

On 5 has been hewn the lion in the wood where the wood-pecker comes-to
him; on 7 the lion writhes with pain, and on 8 he is helped by the
wood-pecker.

On 9 we see the hungry bird near the lion with his prey.

Major Van Erp supposes that this last sculpture should refer to another
jâtaka. See at the bottom.


Many pieces formerly placed among the mentioned sculptures, have been
lost whereas other ones have not yet been explained. But when we
remember how those described here follow each other in the same range of
succession like the _jâtakas_ in the _Mâla_ translated by Speyer, we
then may believe that the not expounded and missing sculptures have had
some connection with other _former lives_, and that even _this_ gallery
may have been a continuous series.

Oldenburg indicated indeed, still other jâtakas in this series which had
not been translated by Speyer, that is, after the _western_ staircase,
6, 7, 8 and 9 (W. L., 192, 193, 194 and 195).

The Lord hewn as a _tortoise_ at sea takes the endangered crew of a
sinking ship on his back, and carrying them ashore he offers his own
body to the starving ones.

On 6 has been hewn the tortoise, on 7 the sinking ship surrounded by
sharks and other fish, on 8 we see the tortoise with the shipwrecked men
on his back, and 9 describes the rescued ones with their rescuer who is
inclined to sacrifice himself.


On the front-wall of the fifth and highest gallery Oldenburg meant the
_second_ sculpture behind the _southern_ staircase (W. L. CCCLXXXIX) to
be the Lord as the _horse_ Balâha, which, once carried travellers across
the sea.

But as for the _lower_ series of the back-wall of the first gallery he
shows to:

3 after the _eastern_ staircase and 1 after the _next_ corner which
should refer to king Dakshina Pantyala’s conversation with the bewitched
_nâga_ Janmatyitra; the latter’s exorcism and redemption by _hunter_
Halaka (the Lord), and the hunter’s admission into the residence of the
grateful nâga.

This nâga is to be recognised at the serpents in his hair[54].

Mr. _Foucher_ fortunately gives us an account of this story (according
to the text of the _Divyâvadana_) far more detailed than I could have
possibly taken from other sources.

It refers to the _Sudhana Kumârâ Vadâna_: the 1th after the _second_
corner, and following relievoes: 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22, 24, 26,
28, 30, 32, 34, 36, 38 and 40 W. L. It begins with the first panel south
of the eastern staircase.

1. In the empire of _Pantyâla_ there once lived 2 kings, one in the
      north, and the other in the south. The first was a good prince,
      and his empire prospered. The latter was bad, and his empire had
      fallen into decay. Probably, the first prince may have been hewn
      here.

2. The other bad king discusses with his ministers what to do to raise
      his empire from decay. Under the pretext of a hunting-party he
      inspects his neglected country, and then forms a plan to kidnap
      the young _nâga_ Jammatyitraka from the hands of his thriving
      neighbour. Now it should be understood that this _nâga_ lives in a
      pond situated outside the capital of north-_Pantyâla_, and as he
      knows to dispose of rain the country abounds with excellent
      produce even during the dry monsoon. Perhaps the brahmin we see
      before the king, will be the snake-charmer whose crimes we are
      going to know.

3. This relievo shows us a succession of three events. First of all (to
      the right) the young _nâga_ kneeled down calls in hunter Halaka’s
      assistance. In the midst we see the same _nâga_, angrily and most
      unwillingly rising from his lotus-pond under the brahmin’s formula
      of exorcism, and in front of the latter’s sacrificial fire; but
      hunter Halaka kills the conjurer after having compelled him to
      give up his wicked plan.

  And to the left may have been hewn the very same brahmin when he
  shortly before got the king’s secret command to commit this evil. In
  this case this episode should be exceptionally thought as a preceding
  one to both the middle-most and first sculpture.

4. The young _nâga’s_ parents make their son’s rescuer splendidly
      welcome. On this occasion the hunter wears a princely costume
      which is above his rank (caste), but he appears without his host’s
      present, the never failing knot.

5. In the Himâlaya. The hunter squats down near the _kinnarî Manoharâ_
      he caught with his knot. To the left other _kinnarîs_ are flying
      over a lotus-pond. To the right we see the ascetic whose words
      directed the hunter’s arm on his catching the fairy.

6. The hunting Sudhana, crown prince of the northern empire, is just
      coming on, and the hunter presents him with the kinnarî he caught.
      Fairy and prince fall in love with one another.

7. The king of the northern empire, Sudhana’s father, discusses with his
      _purohita_ or private prelate, the traitor in this drama, who
      tries to persuade the king into charging the prince with the heavy
      burden to overpower a rebellious vassal against whom no less than
      7 expeditions had already failed.

8. The prince bids his mother fare-well, and charges her with the care
      of his young wife.

9. Sudhana under a tree outside the rebellious town. Vaisyravana, one of
      the four great deities of this country, sends his general Pântyika
      with a troop of _yakshas_ to assist him.

10. Once more in _Hâstinapura_, the royal residence of the northern
      empire. The king asks his _purohita_ to interpret a bad dream upon
      which the priest demands to sacrifice a _kinnarî_ in order to
      avert an immanent danger. The king hesitates, and the queen gives
      proof of her dislike.

11. The good heart of both triumphs, and Manoharâ escapes through the
      air.

12. With the assistance of the _yakshas_ Sudhana performed the task he
      took upon his shoulders and offers his father the taxes and fines
      of the rebels submitted.

13. After having learned the reason of Manoharâ’s absence he applies to
      his mother again for help.

14. Druma, king of the region of the _kinnaras_, surrounded by his
      court. Manoharâ, seated on his left hand, relates her experience
      among mankind. So we find ourselves in the Himâlaya again, in this
      region of fairies and spirits hardly to be penetrated.

15. Sudhana consults the _risyi_ who once helped the hunter on his
      catch, and who now hands him a ring and a travelling-plan Manohara
      had given him to this purpose.

16. Sudhana outside the capital of king Druma, where he comes across
      some _kinnarîs_ who are drawing some water out of a well to
      cleanse Manoharâ’s body from all human-smell. Sudhana flings the
      ring into a vase of one of the fairies, and requests her to be the
      first to empty this vase on her mistress’s head. According to the
      text Foucher consulted, the fairy should have remained quite
      ignorant of all this, consequently the sculptor must have swerved
      from this text, or, perhaps, meant another one.

17. Manoharâ found the ring, and tells her father about Sudhana’s
      coming. The king agrees to put him to the test; to the left of
      this relievo we see him bend his bow to drive an arrow through 7
      cocoa-trees. Druma himself is watching this, and to be recognised
      by his _prabha_.

18. He then gives the prince his daughter.

19. The newly-married couple is now enjoying their happiness in the
      woman’s quarter. In honour of them, and to the accompaniment of
      music, a court-dancer is showing her art of dancing. This fair
      dancer is one of the best proofs of the sculptor’s art.

20. Returned at _Hastinâpura_ the newly-married distribute presents
      among their people.

In this same series follow 6 other sculptures referring to the
Maitrakanyaka-_jâtaka_; a note-worthy _karma_-legend.

We shall find them after having turned the _fifth_ corner of the
_northern_ staircase, and on our having reached the _east_ side of the
ruin where we are going to view the 2nd, 3d and 4th sculpture (W. L.,
214, 216 and 218), and 1 after the _sixth_ corner (W. L., 220), and 1
and 2 after the _seventh_ corner (W. L., 222 and 224) all of which Mr.
Winter photographed for me.

On the _first_ of these imageries we first see a woman handling a
balance, and probably serving the customers of the young merchant
Maitrakanyaka. This woman is likely to be his mother, and if he himself
has been hewn near her, he can’t possibly be the shabbily dressed and
bearded man who stands next to her. This man rather reminds of a brahmin
or a mendicant friar instead of a rich merchant. The man by her other
side is not visible on the photograph.

Clearer however, is the following group in which professor Speyer made
us known Maitrakanyaka’s mother throwing herself at her son’s feet, and
beseeching him to give up his plan to undertake a sea-voyage.

The widow’s tress made the professor suppose that the beautiful
moustache (with which Wilsen adorned this little sculpture in Leemans’
work) should be a mistake of the draughtsman. And he observed this
rightly, and so did I after heaving read Speyer’s essay,[55] because I
have been able to ascertain _in loco_ that even the woman’s breasts,
Wilsen didn’t see or engrave at least, are clearly to be seen and
palpable. To be very short the legend runs as follows:

Maitrakanyaka was still a child when his father was shipwrecked on a
voyage. According to time-honoured usage he was afterwards inclined to
choose his father’s profession. In the beginning his mother told him
that he had kept a shop, and afterwards had dealt in perfumes and in
gold.

Maitrakanyaka did likewise, and gave his mother the first 4, 8, 16 and
32 _kârshâpanas_ he gained, that they might be divided among the
brahmins and indigent. These were four _good_ deeds.

But when he was told that his father had gone abroad on business, and as
he soon saw that his mother could not deny this he resolved to tread in
his father’s foot-steps in spite of his mother’s resistance who feared
to lose her only child in the very same way like she formerly lost his
father. Bathing in tears she fell on her knees at last, and tried to
detain him at the last moment, but he gave her a kick and went on board.
This was one _evil_ deed, and according to the doctrine of the _karma_,
the eternal law of cause and consequence, he should be _punished_ for
this deed of his as sure as he would be rewarded for his _good_ deeds.

On the _second_ sculpture we see him shipwreck, and after having reached
the shore he finds there _four_ celestial young women who reward him for
his first _good_ deed by letting him, for many years, dream a dream of
perfect happiness till his _karma_ drives him away from there,
successively showing him _eight_, afterwards _sixteen_, and at last
_two-and-thirty_ more and more beautiful nymphs in return of the as many
_kârshâpanas_ he formerly gave away to the indigent. Finally he happens
to enter a castle which gate closes itself behind him, and there he sees
a martyr bearing a red-hot wheel turning for ever on his head, that is,
the inexorable punishment to all who insulted their father or mother.
This wheel the unhappy one will always bear till another, guilty of the
same deed, will release him.

On the _third_, _fourth_, and _fifth_ sculpture have been hewn the
encounters with the 8, 16 and 32 nymphs, though, for want of room, we
can’t see 5 of the 16 and 19 of the 32 nymphs. And on the _sixth_ and
last sculpture we first see Maitrakanyaka suffer under the torture of
the red-hot wheel, but at a short distance from this we see him
_released_ by the expression of his self-denying wish, that another,
guilty of such a deed, may _never_ come to free him.

I think the last group of this very same imagery should refer to the
conclusion of this _karma_-legend: the Bodhisattva’s dying and his
transition into the _nirvâna_.[56].

Foucher means that the four relievoes which precede the shipwreck, refer
to the same _jâtaka_, and that Maitrakanyaka may have been already
represented with his mother on the first sculpture where the son offered
his mother a purse filled with the kârshâpanas he first gained. On the
following panel, divided into two by a style of building, Foucher sees,
to the right, the son in his last business which may appear from the
goldsmith’s balance whereas the larger purse should refer to the very
same one in which he gathered the 32 kârshâpanas.

On the other, left part, Foucher thinks he also sees the mother at her
son’s feet. So does Speyer, and so do I.

As with regard to the following relievoes I refer to that which I
already said formerly.

As for the _seventh relievo_ I beg to point to my explanation, and
interpretation in my “_Oudheidkundige aanteekeningen_” IV^th (page 25
and 26). According to Foucher the sculptor should not have dared to
represent Maitrakanyaka as a repentant sinner, because of his being the
_Bodhisattva_ himself. Anyhow, the redemption of this punishment by a
deed of the highest self-denial appeared so very significant to me that
it should not have been unnoticed, neither in metaphor nor in writing,
but this would have been impossible if this punishment had not preceded
the redemption itself.

And moreover, granting the one little sculpture to represent the older
penitent with the flaming nimble on his head, it surely should have
preceded Maitrakanyaka’s sculpture, and by no means come after this
whilst M. first arrives in the town of darkness, and afterwards finds
there the martyr from whom he takes possession of the nimble. And last
of all, the separating trees should not have had any sense at all if
they should not refer to two following events relating to the very same
person.

I think it my duty to point to the following sculptures of the upper
series of the front-wall which represent no jâtakas but refer to the
_Buddha_ of after life.

After the _eastern_ staircase and the _second_ corner, 15 (W. L., 28).

Buddha in a _preaching_ posture forming the _tyakra_ with the thumb and
index of his right arm such as all Buddhas do, we see hewn in the niches
of the highest, fifth, wall[57].

Lotus-throne and _prabha_, style of hair-dress and costume have been
hewn in the same manner as those of the Buddhas of all niches. All round
about him we see auditors rendering homage to him.

_Western_ staircase, _fifth_ corner, 2 (W. L., 235) shows a similar
sculpture, but above the Buddha two angels are floating in the air, and
near him we see stand burning incense-offerings.

After the _seventh_ corner, 4 and 8 (W. L., 252 and 256) we see similar
representations, with this difference however, that on the last
sculpture the Lord has been hewn in the posture of the fifth
_Dhyâni-Buddha_ (like all Buddhas on the 4 lower walls on the north
side), and that his curls of hair have not been finished.

Still other relievoes of this very same lower series have been explained
by Mr. Foucher.

At the _south-west_ corner, west of the southern staircase, has been
hewn king Mândhâtar’s life, but not any sculpture before the eighth can
be expounded from the _Divyâvadâna_ text. The seven preceding sculptures
are likely to refer to the same history the sculptor brought to light
something more than the text’s writer did, who starts from the hero’s
birth, and describes his acts of government after having given a short
account of his youth.

Foucher’s meaning was quite unexpectedly confirmed by another writing,
the so-called _Bodhisattvavadânakalpalata_ which runs as follows:

“One day (king) Uposyada went on horseback in order to visit a hermit’s
colony which had asked for his assistance to be defended from demons.

There were princely risyis who kept a stone bottle ready. This was meant
for a sacrifice which was to have the power to procreate children. The
king, tired as he was of the long ride, and before he could be prevented
from doing so, empties the bottle. Returned at home he discovers an
unpainful swelling on his head, and when the tumour had ripened at
length out came a boy whose education was disputed by the 60.000 women
of the _harem_.”

On this ground of birth the child was _called_ Mûrdhyaya, and Mândhâtar
or Mûrdhatar when both names are joined together.

It was the Kasymir poet Ks_yemendra who gave Foucher this missing link
to explain the sculptures.

On the two first relievoes we see the distribution of presents done in
the name of the king that he might get a child.

On the third sculpture the king is departing.

On the fourth we see Upasyada dismounting, and the sacrificial vase he
is going to drink from.

5 shows us the child got by this.

6 and 7 refer to the horoscope of the future _tyakravartin_ or suzerain
      of the world, and the astrologer’s reward.

On 8 the young prince bids his father farewell in order to travel about
      the country.

On 9 he is informed of his father’s death, and his succession to the
      throne.

10. Between the young prince and two risyis floating in the air,
      recognisable by their large tuft of hair and their rosaries, we
      see some broken winged birds sitting on the ground. The curse of
      one of the 500 risyis, living in a neighbouring wood, broke their
      wings.

  The king, indignant at such cruelty, denies the risyis every right for
  staying on his territory.

11. On his further journey Mândhâtar forms a plan to cause a rain of
      corn so as not to oblige his people to work any longer.

12. Cotton shall be cultivated no more, neither spinned nor weaved, and
      now ready clothes are falling down out of the clouds.

13. Taking offence at the fact they ascribe the merit of all these
      wonders to themselves, the king now produces a seven days’ rain of
      gold which fell within the walls of his palace, and with the
      exception of the king himself and his ministers we only see women
      gather the treasures falling down out of vases hidden in the
      clouds.

14. Mândhâtar marches out to conquer the world. The feet of none stir
      the earth.

15. A _yaksha_ shows the king the way as how to make new conquests. The
      sculptor represented this yaksha as a brahmin-minister.

16. The guide brings the king to his pinnacle of glory. Two kings having
      a striking resemblance to each other, throne in a palace on seats
      which are equally high.

  One of them is Syakra, the Indra of deities, and on Mândhâtar’s
  unuttered wishes he ceded to him half his territory. Only by his
  non-blinking the god is to be distinguished from the man-king, and it
  goes without saying that the sculptor was not able to show this.

17. Deities fighting _asuras_ (devils). With the assistance of their
      human ally the deities gain the victory over them.

18, 19, and 20 don’t exactly correspond to the text which teaches us
      that Mândhâtar asked his ministers who got the day.

  “The king” they replied upon which the creezy one tried to dethrone
  Indra in order to rule himself. Scarcely did he entertain this, when
  he saw himself flung down from heaven to earth, and dying he bewails
  his blind impertinence.

20 may bear upon his cremation, and upon the entombing of his ashes into
      a _stûpa_.


Out of the 10 _relievoes_ in front (south) of the western staircase, the
_sixth_ explains itself.

A pigeon was caught by a falcon, and the _Bodhisattva_ buys the poor
animal’s liberty by offering the bird of prey a proportional part of his
own flesh. This is the so-called _Syébi-jataka_.


Out of the 30 _relievoes_ belonging to the lower series of the
_north-west_ corner, some 22 or 25 may refer to the _Rudrâyanavadana_.
Passing the first 3 sculptures north of the western staircase we shall
see on:

4. Rudrâyana, king of _Roruka_, consulting _Râyagriha_ merchants about
      the merits of their prince, Bimbisâra.

5. A king receives from a courtier a square sheet of paper or gives him
      this. It is Rudrâyana’s letter addressed to _Magadha_’s king. So
      the principal personage should be one of these two, but who knows
      which? It doesn’t appear after all.

6. A reception at the court of one of them in order to lend an ear to
      the bearers of the letter or to take their leaves. All round about
      a large dish, likely full of rice, we see some 20 smaller plates
      full of other eatables.

7. Bimbisâra receives the jewel-case Rudrâyana sent him with the letter.

8. In the midst we see the box containing the presents made in return
      all which _Magadha_’s king destined for his cousin of _Roruka_.
      The principal personage is Bimbisâra again, who gives, or
      Rudrâyana, who receives.

9. Bimbisâra gets a precious armour from Rudrâyana.

10. _Roruka_’s inhabitants on the occasion of the present’s arrival made
      in return by Bimbisâra; a drawing with a silhouette of the
      _Buddha_. The bearer is riding an elephant.

11. Almost on a part with 4, but now _Râjagriha_’s messengers are
      sounding the praise of the _Buddha_.

12. Rudrâyana requested the _Buddha_ for being instructed by a monk, and
      the Lord sent him Mahâkâtyâyana who now takes a higher seat next
      to the king. A declining gesture of the monk may refer to a
      refusal to preach the doctrine in the woman’s quarter. This ought
      to be done by a nun.

13. The nun Syailâ preaches before the king and his wives.

14. Such another representation but with a second nun standing behind
      Syailâ. In all likelihood an ordinator. In the king’s place we see
      a _third_ BHIKSYUNÎ who may be queen Tyandraprabhâ. Acquainted as
      she is with the circumstance that she won’t live much longer she
      got the king’s permission for being admitted into the order.

15. The queen, after death born again in heaven, descends to show the
      king the way for a reunion in the Great Beyond.

16. Rudrâyana communicates to his son Syikhanḍin his resolution to
      become a monk, and so to abdicate the throne in his son’s behalf.

17. At _Râyagriha_ the _Buddha_ consecrated Rudrâyana a _bhiksyu_, and
      on his first way as a mendicant friar he declines Bimbisâra’s rich
      offerings.

18. To the right we see how merchants from _Rudrâyana_’s country inform
      him Syikhanḍin’s bad behaviour. And to the left how the son is
      informed by his wicked ministers about his father’s return, and we
      then also see how he therefore forms a plan to have his father
      murdered. In the back-ground we see Syikhanḍin’s mother in her own
      palace.

19. Even this relievo is divided in two. To the right Syikhanḍin learns
      that his father has been killed, perhaps by the man with the long
      sword. And to the left he seeks comfort from his mother who frees
      him from the heavy burden of parricide by letting him know that
      Rudrâyana wasn’t really his father.

20. But the equally unpardonable murder of a _bhiksyu_, a saint, weighs
      heavily on the king. In order to free him from so great a debt
      they now pretend there are no saints. Deceivers are those who mean
      to be _arahats_. To the left we see two cats, each of them in a
      _stûpa_ of her own. They have been taught to answer to the names
      of the two first converts convinced by Mahâkâtyâyana, and to the
      right we see the queen-mother with her son who agrees with such
      sofisms.

21. To the right king Syikhanḍin in a sedan-chair. He tells his retinue
      to throw sand at the monk Mahâkâtyâyana. To the left the monk
      himself, released as he now is from the heap of sand, predicts
      _Roruka_’s downfall to the two good ministers Hiru and Bhiru.

22. From his palace the king is watching the rain of jewels which
      precedes the wicked storm of sand[58].

  People jostle each other on catching up the treasures. In the
  foreground we see the two good ministers loading a boat with the
  mentioned riches.

23. Fate in fulfilment. _Roruka_ and almost all its inhabitants are
      buried under the sand. We see Mahâkâtyâyana on his home-journey in
      the village of _Khara_. Through the air the tutelary goddess of
      the destructed town followed him to that place, and the monk
      leaves her his begging cup over which a _stûpa_ will be built.

24. In the next stage, called _Lambaka_, the inhabitants offer the
      royalty to the monk’s disciple, Syâmaka, because of the wonder
      they saw, that is, that the shadow of the tree under which he took
      his seat, behaved to himself but didn’t follow the course of the
      sun.

25. In the third stage, named _Vokkâna_, the monk gives his mendicity to
      a woman, who in former life, had been his mother. Reason for the
      building of a new _stûpa_.

26, 27 and 28. A rural scene between two sea-pieces. On 27 we see a monk
      in a town fenced all around. Mahâkâtyâyana’s return in
      _Syrâvastî_. 26 and 28 represent Hiru’s and Bhiru’s disembarkment
      on the spots where they once will found the towns of _Hiruka_, and
      _Bhiruka_.


The 2 remaining panels, 29 and 30, relate the touching story of the two
_kinnaras_ who could never forget that one day, 697 years ago, man and
wife had been separated in their millennial life for a whole night
because of a swollen river.

The king of _Bénarès_, one day hunting for game, surprised and listened
to them. In the one relievo we see the prince hewn in a standing—in the
other in a sitting posture, for the rest both the representations
consecrated to the _kinnara-_ or _Bhalâtya-jâtaka_, have been hewn in
the same manner.

These mythical beings I always called _gandharvas_ because they always
represent birds provided with a human head and bust. I never saw them
with a horse’s head like _kinnara’s_ have been described in Dowson’s
_Classical Dictionary_.


With the exception of the _Maitrakanyakavadâna_, mentioned here-above,
Foucher didn’t explain any other _relievo_ of the inferior series of the
back wall at the _north-west_ corner, because we haven’t any data.

He also had no time necessary for a complete and decisive study of the
sculptures we see on the 3 higher galleries. He only acknowledged their
less historical or legendary sense but accepted their iconographic
character. Some sculptures of the second gallery _I_ thought to be
Hindu-gods represented as _Bodhisattvas_, _he_, on the other hand,
thought they were _Avalokitésyvara_, and _Manjusyri_. This does
correspond at last to my meaning because _Avalokitésyvara_ is nobody
else but the deity Shiva, in this case Padmapâni, at the same time the
fourth _Dhyâni-Bodhisattva_.


IX.

A short word about some sculptures we see on the three higher galleries.
No double series are to be seen there, but the hewn panels, especially
those of the back-walls of the second and fourth gallery, are a little
higher, and have been partly modeled in an excellent style.

Wilsen’s and Leemans’ engravings are not always true representations of
the sculptures themselves, f. i. no: 214 (W. L.) representing the
unpardonably bad drawing of _Maitrakanyaka’s_ mother. But for professor
Speyer’s acute observation she would have been never recognised perhaps,
and this group would then have remained unexplained for ever, if this
sculpture, and so many other ones, might happen to be ruined at all.
Fortunately enough, I ordered this group to be photographed for about 4
years ago, and these photos can’t possibly lie[59].

The productions, formerly taken by Mr. van Kinsbergen to the cost of the
Dutch Government, are beyond my reach, and so I’ve not been able to
control whether this sculpture has been photographed or not. I think it
was not.[60].

Let me mention another example of Wilsen’s inaccuracy, the _thirtieth_
sculpture we see on the back-wall of the _second_ gallery, and so much
the more, because it might have been easily photographed. More than one
expert did so, among others, in 1901 (in my presence) the known _Padang_
and _Atyèh_ photographer C. Nieuwenhuis. Comparing this photo with
Wilsen’s drawing we shall perceive that the two inner-pilasters of the
small temple have been wrongly drawn, and that the outer-pilasters,
behind the standing women, have been _forgotten_; that the _prabha_
(glory) _behind_ the saint’s head, we see sitting _inside_ this small
temple, impossibly goes upward before the upper-threshold of the
entrance; and that the young lions and the throne’s carpet have been
disfigured as well as the garlands and prayer-bells, both in form and
placing. This also refers to the visitor’s parasol, and to the
flower-offering we see near him. The second parrot, just above the right
bodhi-tree, and one flower-piece to the right under this tree, have been
wholly left out. This visitor’s hand _flatly_ folded for a _sĕmbah_
(salaam) has not been folded _flatly_, because the finger-tips only
touch each other, so that the _sĕmbah_ itself is to be recognised no
more. The right foot of this man the drawer also forgot[61].

It is not difficult to show such mistakes in other drawings of Wilsen’s;
and I therefore suppose them not to be relied upon for the explanation
of further particulars.

There where Wilsen copied monks (_bhiksyus_) he nearly always raised
them to _Buddhas_ by decorating their clean-shaven heads with the
hair-crown, the _tiara_ or _usynîsya!_ as if he, who didn’t even know
the text the sculptor had followed, knew far better than the latter! And
don’t we know how he, just like Ovid in his _Metamorphoses_, changed
women into men or otherwise?


I further point to the above mentioned sculpture because of the worship
of the _bodhi-tree_ characterised by parasols and _tyĕmaras_
(fly-flaps), rosettes and prayer-bells. Such fig-trees are still
cultivated and honoured by all the _Ceylon_ (and elsewhere) pagodae even
at this day, and in consequence of this worship by buddhistic ancestors
the Sundas and Javanese always respect _kiaras_ and _wĕringins_
(_banyan-trees_) and other akin _Ficaceae_.

Such trees as we always see on the _alun-aluns_, the front-places of
_kratons_ and _dalĕms_ of princes and native chiefs originally meant, I
think, a recognition to _Buddha_’s fig-tree. The preacher and his
doctrine are forgotten here in Java, but one of the forms of this
worship still exists.


I mention the _eighteenth_ and the _twenty-second_ sculpture (eastern
staircase, _fifth_ corner, 2 and _sixth_ corner, 1) because of the
winged shell, the _syankha_, provided with _payongs_ and _tyĕmaras_ as a
sign of dignity.

Even now Javanese princes carry the _tyåkrå_, the _trisulå_ and other
weapons of deities in their _ampilan_[62], and so Vishnu’s _tyankra_
doesn’t mean that the person whom it is carried after, should refer to
this deity, though it is true that the _Buddha_ of the _Mahâyânists_
must be this god’s _avatâra_.

Among the following imageries I more especially see Hindu-gods as
Buddha’s predecessors. (_Bodhisattvas_).

The four-armed sculpture we see on 18 (_southern_ staircase, _fourth_
corner 5), in Buddha posture on a throne carried by a bull, the _nandi_,
the _vâhana_ or Shiva’s carriage, makes us think, even without any other
characteristic, of a _Bodhisattva_, perhaps. The lost head might have
given more certainty.

Similar images we find on 100, 101, 102 and 104 W. L.[63].

On the first (_northern_ staircase, _second_ corner, 1) we see a
four-armed sculpture on a lotus-throne in Buddha posture, with the
glory, and in his left hand an elephant’s hook and a flower. The objects
in his right hand are to be recognised no more. The throne itself has
been adorned with elephants, lions and _nâgas_. The four arms near the
single face may possibly refer to Vishnu or another deity, but not to
Brahma which we see generally hewn four-faced: the small Buddha image in
the crown only speaks of Buddhism[64].

And as Buddha, according to the northern church, had been Vishnu’s
_avatâra_, this deity may by no means raise our astonishment because of
his being represented here as a _Bodhisattva_.

Even the following sculpture (2 after the _second_ corner) has been hewn
four-armed, but too badly damaged to be recognised as the deity it
should represent.

This also refers to the third sculpture (3 after the corner). The _six_
arms may point to Shiva.

The fourth sculpture (5 after the same corner, W. L., 104) would not be
easily recognised on Wilsen’s drawing. On the ruin itself however, there
is no doubt whatever, because we here see clear enough that the
_upavîta_ is nothing else but the _Cobra_ (snake) with a nicely modeled
and crowned head. And this only speaks of Shiva or of his son Ganesha
who has been always represented as an elephant or with an elephant’s
head so that here he can’t be meant as such.

Another sculpture (W. L., 106, the _seventh_ after the _second_ corner)
is still note-worthy, because the temple wherein it sits (_not_ on a
lotus-cushion) has been crowned by five shivaïtic _trisyulas_. Should
this be a _woman_’s image it then may represent a _Târâ_ or female
deity, but it hasn’t any token to be recognised as Durgâ, the _syakti_
of Shiva[65].

Unique of its kind is the _sixty-ninth_ sculpture on the back-wall of
the following, _third_, gallery (_northern_ staircase, _second_ corner,
2).

To the left we see a deity (a Bodhisattva, perhaps) in a temple crowned
by _eleven trisyulas_. To the right such another deity (or greatness?)
on a lower seat. Between these two stands a tree the branches of which
don’t bear leaves or fruit, but swords and daggers. And beneath there we
see a cauldron full of boiling contents hanging over a flaming fire.
Next to this we see three (armed) men guarding three fettered prisoners
who are likely to ask for mercy to the second, less great deity. It
seems however, that one of the keepers is waiting for further
instructions of the deity we see in the small temple.

The eleven _trisyulas_ make us think of Shiva again, perhaps as Kâla,
the god of death, the all destroying _time_.

Leemans thought this representation should be connected with a
particular event or, should refer, in a general sense, to hellish
punishments. The last mentioned explanation seemed acceptable to me, but
then when taken in a pure symbolical sense.

The king of _Siam_ simply called this a representation of hell. “Buddha
_sees_ hell.”


We may leave the walled terraces after having seen two other sculptures
we find on the back-wall of the fourth and highest gallery which has no
more than 20 angles and hewn wall-panels.

First of all I’ll mention the _fifty-seventh_ sculpture (3 after the
_northern_ staircase). There we see a Buddha throning in a temple upon
which we see, to the right, a flaming _tyakra_ and, to the left, a
_crescent of the moon_ floating in the air on lotus-cushions.

And last of all I’ll point to the _seventieth_ sculpture (_fifth_ corner
2), showing us a similar representation, but where the _tyakra_ has been
replaced by the _disc of the sun_.[66]

One can’t possibly wish a more eloquent witness of the harmony of the
_tyakra_ and _disc of the sun_, and of the connection there is between
these celestial bodies and the _Buddha_, between _Buddha_ and _Vishnu_
or, in other words, between the _Buddha-_ and _sun-worship_.

For completeness’ sake I further mention that on the back-wall of this
gallery are to be found many sculptures upon which more than _five_ till
_seventeen_ Buddhas have been hewn in different postures (mudrâs). In my
opinion the king of _Siam_ rightly observed that here can’t be meant any
_Dhyâni_-Buddha.


Foucher gave us another reasonable explanation of these sculptures by
connecting them with _Syrâvastî_’s _great wonder_ when the _Buddha_
covered all the heaven with the reflexions of his own body. For the sake
of brevity I therefore refer to that which has been mentioned hereabout
in my “_Oudheidkundige Aanteekeningen_” IV, p. 42 and 44.

It only remains for me now to speak a few words about the relievoes
major van Erp recognised to be _jâtaka_-representations guided as he was
by the text of the great work of Mr. Cowell’s and contributors.

In the lower series on the front-wall of the _first_ gallery we see, on
the second sculpture south of the eastern staircase, the _Bodhisattva_
ploughing his field as a farmer. Performing this task he suddenly finds
a treasure the fourth part of which he presents the needy. (W. L.,
engraving CXXXVI). This is the _Kanytyanakhandhajâtaka_.

In the upper series on the very same wall van Erp thought the last of
the 4 sculptures, after the _fourth_ corner west of the southern
staircase, to be another _Sigala-jâtaka_. In imitation of professor
Speyer’s however, I described this as the _jâtaka_’s conclusion, the
starving _sparrow_ asking the lion for a little bit of the prey he
killed shortly before. (W. L.’s engraving CLXX).

And in 5 _relievoes_ on the same front-wall, but on the northern side of
the ruin (not engraved in L’s) he meant he saw the _Mora-jâtaka_, where
the _Bodhisattva_, caught as a peacock by the hunter of the king of
_Bénarès_, teaches the doctrine to the prince.

Another _jâtaka_ has been still mentioned in Leemans’ (Engraving
CLXXXIII, and CLXXXIV and 3 other ones), where the _Bodhisattva_ died a
monkey when he sacrificed his life for the sake of his blind mother. His
younger brother did likewise all which can’t prevent the hunter from
shooting down even the mother-monkey after having first killed the two
others.

It is the _Syula-Nandiya-jâtaka_ in which the wicked hunter is being
severely punished.

According to the pâli-text the _Buddha_ himself related that this former
hunter afterwards became his wicked nephew Devadatta; his younger
brother-monkey Ananda, and that their blind mother was afterwards
reincarnated in his step- and foster-mother Gotamî[67].

Van Erp gives us at last an explanation of another _relievo_ we see on
the lower series of the same wall, but this hasn’t been engraved in
Leemans’ work either. Consulting the ground-plan we come across number
120 which refers to the panel it has been sculptured upon. Van Erp
possesses a photography of this.

It corresponds pretty well to the relievoes I described as 11 and 12 of
the upper series behind the second corner south of the eastern
staircase, because in the two jâtakas the _Bodhisattva_ represents a
hare who flings herself into a fire to feed a hungry traveller; in this
_Syasya-jâtaka_ however, the mentioned hungry man does not represent the
deity Indra but rather a _risyi_ or anachorete, who rescues the hare out
of the flames as well as Indra did.


I further mention that each of the terraces under foot lies about 3
yards higher than the preceding one, and communicates with each other by
staircases of about 10 treads on an average.

Further, that each gallery between the walls is about 2 yards wide, and
that these walls have a thickness of 1½ yard.

And finally, that there are among the architectural ornaments, I didn’t
mention, numerous _nâga_-heads with opened mules and upward curled
trunks which _formerly_ carried off the rain-water (from under all these
walls) to outside from terrace to terrace. _Nowadays_ this water
permeates through the time-worn stones into the rather loose soil of the
hill till _under_ the ruin. Dropping through all lower joints, and
between the stones falling asunder more and more upon which the heavy
stûpa has been built, it _can’t be otherwise_ or all this is to destroy
the ruin more and more, and sooner or later there will come a time when
the temple itself shall partly or wholly fall to the ground, ... when
the Dutch Government don’t know to prevent this by _doing all that will
be indisputably necessary_.

And as it is a truth not to be denied that _solar heat_ and _rain-water_
are the two prevailing factors to cause the destruction of these and
other ruins the only way to prevent all this _must_ be therefore found
by _shutting out_ solar-heat and rain, that is, by means of a protecting
_cover_ such as drawn up and offered to the Dutch Government by Mr. van
de Kamer. Any other manner of “restoration” will turn out to be a
failure even when one may succeed in joining together all loose stones,
and in cementing all the gaps. For the stone itself (_andesit_-lava) is
so very porous that is used anywhere in Java for filtering-stones.

However, it doesn’t alter the fact that there will be no much chance
that the Dutch Government will do what I also recommended her as the
only thing needful.[68] The late Dr. _Brandes_, the first official
president of the “_Oudheidkundige Kommissie voor Java en Madoera_” had
proposed a far less sovereign but cheaper effort to the rectification of
this sorrowful state of things, and even the authorities in Netherland
concurred with this idea of his, though they would be inclined to think
quite otherwise if they could _unprejudicedly_ examine this question _in
loco_. And the newly appointed president, the competent scholar and
great authority on Indian matters, shall _he_ think otherwise?[69]. Or
will the rain-water continually permeate through and under the
invaluable ruin, and carry away its bottom, and assure at last the ruin
of the richest and most beautiful Hindu-work of art we possess, which,
in all India and even in the mainland, speaks of the Buddha?... Should
we then, as a civilised colonising power, not be worthy of such a
treasure?

Oh, could I only persuade the Indian and Dutch authorities into
_willing_ and _acting_ in quite another and better sense!


The major of the Indian engineer corps, Mr. van Erp, did everything he
could, notwithstanding the limited means the Dutch Government allowed
him to dispose of, and he consequently co-operated to the preservation
of this precious ruin for a longer or shorter period of time. But this
is not yet enough. Granting the means of our (Dutch) small empire to be
too feeble to such a purpose—why then not try to form a
_Båråbudur-Society_ like the French founded a _Société d’Angkor_ in
behalf of the ruins of _Kamboja_, which not only found support from the
side of fellow-country-men in Europe and Farther-India or anywhere else,
but also from foreigners?


X.

Finding ourselves on the fourth gallery we see there twelve-treaded
staircases leading to the twenty-angled upper plane which had been
walled in to its outside only. Successively (concentrically thus) we see
there three circular terraces continually rising one yard and a half,
declining three yards, and connected with each other by means of seven
or eight-treaded staircases.

Along the outer-edge of the first we see stand 32 open worked _dagobs_
or _tyaityas_; on the second there are 24, and on the third and highest
16, so altogether 72. And within this circle rises the majestic
middledagob as the _only real dagob_ or _stûpa_ representing the leading
idea, the final purpose of the whole ruin.

When standing on the polygonal upper plane the space between the spires
of niches and _tyaityas_ of the highest wall offers a strikingly
beautiful aspect deep down and far off on the surrounding mountainous
landscapes; a vista we enjoy far better when from the third and highest
circular terrace. The whole valley of _Prågå_ lies there westward at the
foot of mount _Mĕnoreh_, a neptunian formation of volcanic
materials—and, to the east, of the high twin volcanoes _Mĕrbabu_ and
_Mĕrapi_, and, to the north, of the _Sumbing_, the highest volcano of
this part of Central Java.


All the open worked tyaityas of the round terraces have a round foot
modeled like a lotus-cushion doing duty as _Padmâsana_ which carries the
sculpture (placed thereupon and inside) with its bell-shaped barrow.

The bell with square openings has a height of 1½ yard carrying a
slantingly rising square stone-block crowned with an octangular cone
rounded off on its top[70].

The large _middle-dagob_ has the same type, but its wails partly rise in
a perpendicular line above the foot nicely framed and hewn in the style
of a colossal lotus-cushion in order to finish into a flat cupola rising
for at least 8 yards above the highest circular terrace.

It was van Erp who found back some fragments of the large cone, which
once crowned this real _dagob_, so that he was able to finish again this
_stûpa_, now wholly closed again, and crowned once more with the basis
of the cone.

The unfinished _Buddha_ image found inside in its _bhumi-sparsya-mudrâ_
had been kept outside, and provisionally deposited on the hill at the
north-western foot of the ruin.

Now it will be impossible to reach this _dagob_’s top because the
temple-stone staircase leading to this (it should be understood however,
that the staircase itself _did not belong there_), has been removed, but
a walk on the highest terrace situated at the foot some 40 yards above
the hill-top is still worth while, and the eyes are pleased then with
the very same beautiful vista formerly to be overlooked from a brick
bench placed on the damaged cupola, and overburdened as it were with the
names of unknown visitors scratched upon it.

Deep, ever greening and blooming, or, in harvest-time, brown-yellow or
earth-colored planes, most often cloud-likely bedewed early at morn,
breathing life and enjoyment of life, so to say under the powerful ribs
of mount _Mĕnoreh_, badly bursten and highly crowned, and the cloud-like
tops of craters of more than three volcanoes, and the active _Mĕrapi_
still vomitting death or destruction in their surroundings, but also
producing new life on the soil all covered with time-worn
volcanic-ruins.

In face of such a stupendous creation we feel very little—yet, as the
children of the very same creation, rich, and as thinking beings happy
and great[71].


XI.

It only remains for me now to add a short description to the _Buddha_
sculptures which made the ruin call: _Båra-buddå_ or _Pårå buddå_, that
is, the _many_ or _conjoint Buddhas_.[72].

All of them are in a sitting posture with crossed legs, almost in the
same posture the Javanese call _silå_, but upright.

They are dressed in a thin mantle uncovering their right arms and
shoulders—such as the monks of the southern church wear their cowls—and
have the _tiara_, the round hair-knot, on their heads all covered with
short curls. Even the _ûrnâ_, the little tuft of hair on their fronts is
still to be seen on many a sculpture, and on the other ones, less
accurately hewn, they are forgotten[73].

The posture of all of them tells resignation and peace, and may speak of
the later final dissolving in the _nirvâna_, the joy- and painless
_not-to-be_.

But the sculptor didn’t succeed in interpreting all the sculptures in
this sense. Not all the sculptors had been equally good artists for they
must have had much more work the best of them might have finished alone.

Among the sculptures placed opposite the _five_ zones of heaven, the
East, South, West and North and the Zenith, there is to be seen a
_slight_ difference in the posture of the right hands, and something
more difference in the posture of the _two_ hands with regard to those
sculptures we see on the round terraces. _All_ the sculptures on the
_five_ encircling walls have been hewn with their left hands in their
laps, that is, with the palm on the right foot. Those on the _four lower
walls_ have (on the east side) their right hands with their backs, on
the _south_ side these very same hands with the palms upwards on the
right knees; those of the _west_ (opposite to the setting sun) hold both
their hands in their laps, and those of the _north_ rise their right
hands a little above the right thigh, palm forward, and the _five_
fingers closed together in a perpendicular line.

The sculptures of the _whole fifth_ and _highest_ walls dominating _all_
the regions of heaven only distinguish themselves from those on the
_northern_ lower walls by means of the _bent_ index of the raised right
hand forming a _closed circle_ with the somewhat joined thumb, that is,
because of the stone’s brittleness.

The sculptures of the open worked _tyaityas_ on the three round terraces
however, raise their _two_ hands before the epigastric region, the left
one with the palm and the bent finger-tips in an upward direction, the
right one with the palm to the left and the fingers bent over those of
the other hand[74]. Moreover, they all miss the glory and have not been
placed in open temple-niches above a human and mythical- and animal
world represented by many sculptures, but hewn _in transparently closed
graves_, and in higher spheres above this world. There is consequently
more difference than between the sculptures of the five encircling
walls.

There is still another sculpture unique of its kind.

When, a long time ago, in the beginning of our last century, the
middle-dagob was opened a double space was found inside, a smaller above
a larger one, and, among others, a Buddha image corresponding in size to
all other sculptures, whereas the posture of the hands tallied with
those on the _eastern_ lower walls[75].

This image having been unfinished can’t be ascribed to the merest chance
or to an untimely stop of the temple-building, because the dagob itself,
where it had been _wholly closed in_, was finished afterwards.

So it must have been intentionally left in this state, but _I_ can’t
possibly accept the supposition that it should refer to the _future_
[fifth] Dhyâni-Buddha in state of being.

A future, _not yet existing_ Buddha can’t be materialized by a
_half-sculptured_ image, and the _fifth_ Dhyâni-Buddha is never hewed in
the posture of the hands of the _second_, but always, such as on the
northern lower walls, in his _own mudrâ_ whereas the _future_ Buddhas as
_Bodhisattvas_ were represented not only in other postures but also in
another dress and ornament and with their own attributes.

Besides, the hypothesis challenged by me would not yet solve still
existing mysteries, but would only give rise to other enigmas which
don’t bring us any farther.

The explanation of the fact may be much simpler.

_I_ think it may have been considered quite unnecessary to finish a
sculpture in such an accurate manner like all the other ones, if it
should be hidden from sight for ever.


What is the meaning of these different Buddhas?

According to the posture of the hands we may divide them into
_six_—according to other data into _three_ groups. _Nothing more_ and
_nothing less_.

The _three_ groups are:

1. The 432 Buddhas of the open temple-niches on the five richly hewed
      encircling walls, all of them seated on lotus-thrones and crowned
      with glories.

2. The 72 Buddhas of the open worked _tyaityas_ on the three round
      terraces, without any glory or lotus-throne but represented by the
      _padmâsana_ of the tyaitya-foot. But even the human and animal
      world hewn under the niche-Buddhas we don’t see there again.

3. The _only_ Buddha of the large dagob entirely sequestered, without
      glory or throne, but seated above the _padmâsana_ which carries
      the whole dagob.

  The posture of the hands however, ought to refer to _six_ groups,
  because there are _six_ different _mudrâs_.

  Wilhelm von Humboldt was the first who considered _five_ of the _six_
  Buddhas to be the representations of the five _Dhyâni_-Buddhas.

  _Three_ of them: Vairotyana, Akshobhya and Ratna Sambhava successively
  redeemed and ruled over three following former worlds; the _fourth_,
  Amitâbha—our Gautama or _Shakya-muni_—ruled over _our_ world these 24
  centuries, and is said to be succeeded, after the creation of a new
  world, by the _fifth_ and last, Amogasiddha, the _Buddha of love_.

  Especially in the posture of the hands there is some conformity
  between five of the six Båråbudur-images and the five Dhyâni-Buddhas
  such as we see them hewed in Asia. But there are also some points of
  difference.

  In the Mongol countries, for instance, the _two first_ Dhyâni-Buddhas
  are throning in the East; the _third_ in the South, the _fourth_ in
  the West and the _fifth_ in the North[76].

  Taking, according to the posture of the hands, the images of our ruins
  to be _Dhyâni_-Buddhas the East would then be only occupied by the
  _second_ and the _zenith_ by the first of them, that is, above the
  round terraces which don’t dominate any region of heaven. But this
  happens more elsewhere in Asia.

  But which will be the _sixth_ Buddha represented there by _all_ the
  sculptures of the fifth and highest encircling wall, and dominating
  _all_ the zones of heaven, but which _can’t be a Dhyâni-Buddha_?

  That’s a new enigma rightly explained by the king of Siam, I
  suppose,[77] and which I’m going to show directly.

  And that the unfinished Buddha of the _large_ dagob _can’t_ represent
  the _fifth_ Dhyâni-Buddha appears from the posture of the hands which
  would refer to the _second_, 92 times hewed on the eastern
  lower-walls.

  Should it represent a _Dhyâni_-Buddha, it must be this one and for
  such an idea _I_ can’t find any reason.

  Had the _Mahâyânists_ had the intention to place there one of their
  five _Dhyâni_-Buddhas, they surely would have rendered homage to their
  _own_ Redeemer, the _fourth_. The four other ones may have only had a
  legendary-historical sense, consequently also the _second_. In spite
  of the _mudrâ_ of this second _Dhyâni_-Buddha the image itself should
  not be meant as Akshobhya, but simply as the perfect Buddha, the
  _Shakya having taking flesh as Buddha_—for this is the meaning of this
  _mudrâ_ even to the Buddhists of the southern church _who don’t know
  several Dhyânis_ but the _only_ Buddha.

  And as these five Dhyâni-Buddhas don’t wholly explain the images of
  the Båråbudur, and don’t wholly expound the _sixth_, I therefore
  thought it reasonable to take all the Buddhas of the five encircling
  walls as one separated group, those of the three circular terraces as
  a _second_, and the ones of the closed dagob as the only
  representative of a _third_, whereas the placing of the sculptures on
  these five walls should be connected with the _five_ zones of heaven
  Siddhârta took possession of after his birth[78].

  Should this group represent the Buddha perhaps, with reference to the
  human- and animal world described by the sculptures hewed beneath
  there, we then may refer to Wilsen’s and Leemans’ and accept the
  images (_taken from the mentioned world_) of the upper-terraces to be
  the Buddha as _Arahat_ in a state of supreme purity or holiness, in
  the _nirvâna_, perhaps. The Buddha wholly enclosed by the large dagob,
  and so positively separated from the world, may refer to the
  _parinirvâna_, that is, the _wholly_ dissolving in the infinite
  _not-to-be_; _death without regeneration_, the _final purpose of all
  life_[79].

  For this dagob is a closed grave in which for about, or at least,
  eleven centuries ago the Buddhists may have hidden the vase containing
  some ashes of the really died Buddha; a trace of the remainders of the
  great wise man, the spotless preacher; a minim quantity of the
  Master’s ashes, the divine redeemer of all that lives and suffers,
  that thinks, feels and dies.


Mr. Foucher starts from the principle that he doesn’t like to contradict
  the explanation as if these _Buddha_ images were to represent
  _Dhyâni-Buddhas_, but he means that they should be examined more
  closely, and completed, and that the different groups ought to be
  judged again after severe study.

As for the present he discerns:

1, the _bhunisparsya mudrâ_ in the 92 niches on the 4 first walls to
      _the East_;

2, to the _South_ the _vara-mudrâ_;

3, to the _West_ the _dhyâni-mudrâ_;

4, to the _North_ the _abhaya-mudrâ_, and

5, in the 64 niches on the fifth and highest wall the _vitarka-mudrâ_
      (the gesture of _discussion_) and higher, among the 72 cupolae of
      the 3 circular terraces:

6, the _dharma-tyakra-mudrâ_ (mark of distinction), and finally the
      _only_ sculpture from the wholly closed _dagob_, hewed in the
      _bhumi-sparsya-mudrâ_.

So there is a slight difference between Foucher’s idea about the
north-indian _Mahâyânists_ and my defended explanation of the _Siam
Hînayânists_.

“_This is Buddha preaching the tyakra_” said king Tsyula Longkorn to me,
“_and this means the tyakra_”, joining the tops of the thumb and the
index of his right hand so as to form something like a circle.

This seemed convincing to me, and I found this idea confirmed not only
on all and still undamaged statues on the highest wall, but also, and
especially, on a great many _relievoes_ of the second gallery which
represent the _Buddha_ in a preaching posture.

It is true that the exactness of this view of mine had been indirectly
_denied_ by my great official antagonist, the late Dr. Brandes, but
never did he dispute or refute this scientifically.


Mr. Groeneveldt, formerly the most competent authority on our Hindu
sculptures in the Dutch Indies, thought the unfinished image of the
middle-dagob to be a representation of the _Adi-Buddha_, and this would
certainly have expounded this statue in it separately placing, if this
_im_material _primeval_ Buddha might have been ever represented in a
material image. And there are more objections than only this
_impersonality_ of the divine primeval being materially revealing
himself in the different _Buddhas_, and consequently _not_ hewed at
_Nepâl_ and _Tibet_ but only represented by a symbol, a circle or two
eyes[80].

Would the mahâyânistic architects of the Båråbudur have acted in quite a
different sense?

_I_ don’t see any _Dhyâni_-Buddha in this Buddha, but only the _perfect_
preacher _having taken flesh_ as the Buddha, the Master, who, though he
did die, continues to live as long as _this his_ world will exist.


Each posture of the hands has its own meaning, and there are much more
than five _mudrâs_ even in the hînayânistic countries like _Siam_ where
one doesn’t know any Dhyâni-Buddha.

This also refers to the posture of the _sixth_, for a long time
unexplained Buddha on the highest encircling wall whose mudrâ was
rightly called _dharma tyakra_[81]. Thumb and index, circularly joined
together, represent the _tyakra_, god Vishnu’s disc, the sun, the symbol
of the _dharma_, the buddhistic _Doctrine_.

Buddha has been consequently hewed there as _preacher, preaching the
doctrine_ to all people, and _consequently_ towards _all_ the regions of
heaven. And this teaching of the king-Buddhist has been perfectly
confirmed by the fact that on _all_ the sculptures (especially on those
we also see on the backwall of the second gallery) the thumb and the
index join each other in the very same manner.

That this preaching preacher has been placed upon the highest wall will
be easily understood if we consider the preaching of the doctrine to be
the highest vital expression of Buddhism, and possibly referred to both
the world of the four zones of heaven and to the one of the celestials
in the _zenith_.


XII.

A few remarks about the sculptures of the original foot of the
outer-wall we didn’t discover before 1886. In 1890 I proposed them to be
uncovered and photographed, afterwards they were covered again in the
ancient manner, and hidden from sight.

They have been hewed on a projecting wall-foot which goes tolerably deep
beneath the heavy ogive, now resting as a socle again on the surrounding
outer-terrace that has been afterwards built all round the 36-angled
basis of the temple, but only on 24 of the 40 panels. The _two_ sides of
each of the double fore-buildings of the four temple-fronts built
towards the different zones of heaven, _haven’t_ been adorned with any
sculpture, but the staircases divide the four middle fore-buildings into
_two_ panels.

Each of the 24 hewed panels contains _six_ or _eight_ imageries one
metre long by about 80 inches high. A system of flat frames might have
separated the whole series from the mentioned ogive, so to say, a
regular combination interrupted by the staircases only.

If the 160 scenes which form this combination are to represent a series
of following events or legends we then must try to find the beginning
(like on nearly all other hindu temples) to the south of the eastern
staircase following it from there through the South, West and North till
the starting-point in the East.

This _didn’t_ happen and could not have happened when they were
photographed because the temporary uncovering began and was continued at
more than one place at the same time without knowing how many sculptures
there would be found. They have been marked on the clichés with capital
letters for the different panels, and with figures for the scenes of
each panel (from 1 till 6 or 1 till 8), but these numbers have been
occasionally noticed in a just direction, and from time to time in a
reversed successive number. On a few copies we don’t see any letter and
number; they may have been cut off with the margin of papier.

Fortunately, the figures in lead pencil on the back-side could assist
me, though they sometimes started from quite a wrong point.

The Dutch Government ordered 15 pair of photos to be taken from these
clichés, and presented them to special musea or societies. _I_, the
schemer of the plan, do not belong to the favoured. But the afterwards
wrecked Archaeological Society did, notwithstanding I, her president,
sent this plan to the Government for about 25 years ago[82].

Those who desire to examine these photos will find here the letters and
figures in the _just_ successive number of the sculptures to begin with
C 1 south of the eastern staircase.

  C, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6;
  B, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8;
  A, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6;
  U, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1;
  T, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1;
  S¹, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1;
  S, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6;
  R, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8;
  Q, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6;
  P, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1;
  O, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1;
  N¹, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1;
  N, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6;
  M, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8;
  L, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6;
  K, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1;
  I, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1;
  H¹, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1;
  H, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6;
  G, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8;
  F, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6;
  E, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1;
  D, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1;
  C¹, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1;

Six of these 160 sculptures are badly damaged whilst one of them is
wholly lost. (R. 5). Seven have less suffered. Twenty representations
remained partially unfinished (C 3 and 4, B 7, A 2, U 4, S 1, O 7, N 5,
M 2, K 4 and 3, H¹ 2, H 1, G 4 and 8, F 2, 4 and 6, D 3 and C¹ 4).
Partly _finished_ but for the rest not yet drawn in the rough are 3
scenes (H¹ 1, F¹, and D 4) whereas one (I 1) has been scarcely sketched.

On the flat frame above the series we see a few short indications
engraved in ancient-javanese characters—dating, according to professor
Kern, from about the year 800 of the Syaka-era,—roughly hewed and in a
perfunctory manner, as if it were scratched in stone with a knife or a
chisel, that is, above H 1, 2, 3 and 4 (twice); 5 (bis) and 6 (bis); F
1, 4, and 5; E 6 and 5; D 8, 6 (bis), 5 (bis), 4, 3 and 1 (bis)[83].

Some of these legends are no more or hardly to be read but the other
ones read by Dr. J. Brandes don’t teach us any more than that which we
may understand by closely examining the representations themselves, for
instance, that the _sĕmbah_ of the persons seated around a tomb or
sanctuary refers to a reverence to a _tyaitya_[84].

Some inscriptions may contain the name of the person to be hewed, and to
assist the sculptor.

The unfinished and scarcely sketched sculptures prove us that they, such
as on other _tyanḍis_ at _Parambanan_, have been hardly hewed here on
the walls of the finished temples.


In these sculptures I could not have recognised any continuous series.
Among many a domestic and some rural scenes I saw two or three fowlings
with a pea-shooter or bow and arrow (M 5 and 3), and one fishing (I 6);
one war-dance (C 5) and some other dancings on the occasion of which a
wind-instrument provided with a bagpipe (S 2 and R. 17) was played on.
Further there are offerings of food or flowers to Bodhisattvas or other
venerable personalities, and once to the Dhyâni-Buddha Amitâbha, the
Redeemer of this world (K 3), by six crowned men and to be distinguished
by their glories (Bodhisattvas perhaps?)

On one sculpture (K 2) Amitâbha (?) has been four times represented as
an ascetic in the wilderness. Sometimes there are hewed demons or
_raksyasas_, most often attacking or killing other people (M 2, 3, 6, 7
and 8); _tyaityas_ are to be seen more than once (U 3, T 6, 4 and 3, K
4, G 6, F 6, E 6, D 8, 6 and 3, and C¹ 6). _Bodhi_-trees covered by
_payongs_ and some _gandharvas_ under their shade, such as to be found
more than once in the _Parambanan_ ruins and speaking of _Buddhism_ even
there, have been hewed five times (K 6, G 4, F 3 (_bis_) E 4 and C¹ 6),
and once with a _payong_ only (D 1). _Vishnu’s tyakra_ has been once
represented on a lotus-cushion in the sky (C 2).




                            Concluding word.


In a small compass I suppose to have mentioned all that may be discussed
about the _three_ buddhistic monuments speaking in this valley, on the
two banks of the river _Prågå_, of a former high civilisation and of a
very developed art.

Those who require, or desire, a better insight into the ancient
Buddhism, and those who wish to know more about its sanctuaries to be
found here in Java and elsewhere in India, are kindly referred to the
works I consulted by the study of this subject, and to those I wrote
myself and which have been for the greater part mentioned in or at the
bottom of the text of this little book.

Granting Buddhism to have been lost in Java and elsewhere in India,—yet,
it still exists, more or less degenerated, still counting more followers
than any other religion ever counted, and its lucky freedom from
bigotry, especially in the hînayânistic countries, and noble doctrine of
love and self-command is raised above all suspicion[85].


_Jogjakartå_, October, November 1906, and 1911.




                               FOOTNOTES.


[1]See, among others, _H. Kern’s “Geschiedenis van het Boeddhisme”, II,
    page 308_ and following ones, and Dr. _S. Lefman’s “Geschichte des
    alten Indiëns_”, Berlin 1880, page 768 and following ones, and the
    engravings on page 769 and the picture “_Der Açokafelsen van
    Girnaroden Junàgadh im Jahre 1869_”, in the 3^d number of this work
    opposite to page 257.

[2]See my illustrated work published in 1893 by “_het Koninklijk
    Instituut voor de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde van N. I._” entitled:
    “_Tyanḍi Parambanan na de ontgraving_” and therein the photo’s of
    many deities represented as _Bodhisatthvas_, and my “_Boeddhistische
    tempel- en klooster-bouwvallen in de Parambanan-vlakte_”. Surabaya
    1907.

[3]In the Buddha pagodae I visited in _Ceylon_, at Colombo and its
    environs, I saw badly hewn or coloured images of _Shiva_ and of
    _Ganesja_. The monks called these images the representations of
    _Buddha_.

[4]See the English translation of his “_Record of the Buddhist Religion
    as practised in India and the Malay Archipelago_ (A. D. 671-695)” by
    the Japanese scholar I Takakusu., provided with a preface of prof
    Max Müller and published by the Clarendon press at Oxford in 1896.
    Pages XXII, XXV, XXXIX and XLVIII of the “_General Introduction_.”

[5]In a temple at _Kandy_ in Ceylon is kept a tooth which, though of
    animal origin, took the place of a former so-called _Buddha_-tooth
    which has been destroyed by fire. This tooth, named _Dalada_, is
    taken care of, and honoured too. And the holiest pagoda in this
    island, the _Thuparama_, possesses one of Buddha’s clavicles,
    according to the assertion of its believers certainly with as much
    right as the Catholic Christians maintain the genuineness of many a
    relic of Jesus and the apostles.

[6]Even the ashes of other saints, princes and noble men, of gurus or
    teachers, of priests or monks, were occasionally put away in such
    graves upon which arose the glorious mausolea the ruins of which we
    still admire at this day.

[7]It won’t do maintaining that these dagobs should have been formed
    after the lotus, the holy _padma_, and that its openings in the
    transparent dagobs on the round terraces above the Båråbudur must
    represent the empty seed-holes of the nursery of the ripe lotus. The
    leaves of a lotus (_Nelumbium speciosum Willd_) fall off before
    bending downward, and then the pericarp only remains on its stem
    like a _urned_ cone or cupola whose flat, uprighted and afterwards,
    by the sagging of the withering stem, downrighted base has been
    stung by the seed-holes. _Not_ the bell-shaped sides, for they
    remain closed. So these openings must have quite another sense than
    the one derived from the natural form of the lotus-plant.

    Only the _red_ lotus, the _Nelumbium speciosum_ referring to all
    this, and recognisable by its peduncles and leaf stalks rising high
    above the water, has been frequently represented on Hindu temples.
    But not the _white_ lotus, the _Nymphae Lotus Linn._, the leaves and
    flowers of which are floating on the surface of the water.

[8]Professor _Kern_ wrote to me that the alphabetical writing of the
    inscriptions we see on some demi-relievoes on the outer-walls should
    date from the year 800, or thereabouts, of the _Shaka_ era, thus our
    _ninth_ century. And this rather corresponds to the age of the
    Buddha temples in the plain of _Parambanan_. Does not a stone of one
    of these _tyanḍis_ testify to this temple’s having been built in the
    year 701 of the _shaka_ era, and dedicated to the service of _Târâ_
    in honour of the prince’s _guru_ or teacher, who may have been
    buried there? And in the year 415 the Chinese Buddhist, _Fa Hien_,
    when in Java, came across many a brahmin Hindu. He didn’t speak
    about Buddhists, but this circumstance alone does not prove his not
    having met co-religionists, nor does it produce any evidence of
    their non-existence in the interior of Java he didn’t visit
    probably. _I Tsing_ see note says that the inhabitants of Java and
    of the other islands of the Archipelago principally embraced
    Hînayânism. “_Buddhism was ... chiefly the Hînayâna_” (page XLVII),
    and “_the ten or more islands of the Southern Sea_ (_Sumatra_,
    _Java_ _etc._) generally belong to the Hînayâna.” (page XXX). Such
    happened in our _seventh century_.

[9]See his essay about _Aymonier_’s: “Le Cambodge”, I, written in the
    “_Bulletin de l’Ecole française d’Extréme-Orient_”, II, page 83 note
    4.

[10]_Attap_ means palm-fronds used for thatch by the Javanese
    (_Chambers_).

    The scaffolding has been removed since, and the stone roof was
    rebuilt by the major engineer Van Erp. 1911.

[11]This _prabha_ has been also restored. 1911.

[12]The heavy colonnades of which will be sacrificed to the swelling
    waters of the river Nile. But they are doomed to destruction because
    this stream must vivify the rainless country.

[13]I, number 3, p. 249 and II, number 1, p. 20 and 30.

[14]“_Oudheidkundige Aanteekeningen_” IV, p. 59 and 60.

[15]This cone’s top has been removed again because of Mr. van Erp’s
    having been unable to prove his reproduction of this cone with its
    umbrellas to be incontestably true.

[16]This idea of mine about the graduation of the Båråbudur’s origin is
    given as a questionable hypothesis. However great the consequences
    were, we can not know until we have compared the alto-relievoes of
    these and other Javanese Hindu-temples with the artless
    wall-paintings I saw in the Ceylon pagodae.

[17]Buddha himself thought it useless to pray, but the Buddhists of
    later times prayed however, but didn’t worship the images
    themselves. The Chinese—very degenerated Buddhists—light their pipes
    on the flames of the consecrated waxcandles burning on the altar,
    and consider this no sacrilege.

[18]According to _Rhys Davids_’s work, _nirvâna_ means the state of
    holiness which ripes man for death _without regeneration_, the
    so-called _parinirvâna_. But the signification of nirvâna itself
    differs in proportion to time and caste.

[19]This superstratum is about 2,5 yard high and 7 yards wide. The lower
    terrace on the outside was about 3 yards wider, and 1 yard high.
    These numbers are nearly just and sufficient enough to my purpose.

[20]At that time I could not have thought of a permanent uncovering,
    because the preservation of the whole ruin would have required
    retain-walls too expensive, and too much disfiguring the temple
    itself. The architect van de Kamer thought it afterwards possible,
    but expensive, to have the ruin restored again, and its original
    foot permanently uncovered. Sunlight, heat and rain-water however,
    would do much to its decay unless the ruin itself became wholly
    covered. Otherwise the time-worn joints becoming more and more wide
    would admit much more rain-water between the stones into the earth
    of the hill under the ruin, and this earth would then be carried
    away more rapidly than is the case now, and have the ruin spoilt and
    decayed.

[21]Above the first discovered imageries of the foot we found
    inscriptions in ancient Javanese characters scratched in stone. On
    this ground the Society, presided by myself, proposed the Dutch
    Government to have the whole temple’s foot uncovered (in the only
    way possible) without endangering the foot itself, whilst the cost
    was estimated at £ 768. The Government put up with it, and granted
    the necessary sum for the budget of 1890.

[22]As well as so many angels painted by our artists don’t always
    represent a Gabriel, a Raphael or a Michael.

[23]_Bulletin de l’école française d’Extrême Orient_, I, No: 1 page
    21-22.

[24]Both this Nâga and Garuḍa are mythical beings who adopt different
    shapes.

        On the lower        wall   4 × 26 = 104
        on the second         ”    4 × 26 = 104
        on the third          ”    4 × 22 =  88
        on the fourth         ”    4 × 18 =  72
        and on the fifth      ”    4 × 16 =  64
        together                            432

[26]The first effort to interpret this series we owe to the Austrian
    draughtsman in Netherlands-Indian civil service F. C. Wilsen.

[27]We shall afterwards speak about these former lives or _jâtakas_. It
    was Mr. Foucher who afterwards expounded many representations, and
    after him, van Erp also explained another few ones.

[28]If we don’t count those on the front sides of the more than 400
    small dagobs, we see there:

        On the outer-wall,    above                   408
        ”   ”   ”   ”         below                   160
        on the front-wall of the first gallery        568
        on the back-wall                              240
        on the second gallery in front                192
        ”   ”   ”   ”         behind                  108
        third gallery,        in front                165
        ”   ”                 behind                   88
        fourth gallery,       in front                142
        ”   ”                 behind                   70
        altogether                                   2141

[29]The relation of this fact with the apparent course of the sun to the
    inhabitants of the northern hemisphere in which Farther India, and
    Hindostan are situated, was, thus far, shown by nobody before me (in
    1887). Still it is an important fact to those who believe the Buddha
    a _sun-god_.

[30]Of North-India where Buddhism first arose.

[31]_Pratyeka-Buddhas_ are believers raised by their own consummating to
    the dignity of a _Buddha_; they have, however, no right to teach or
    redeem other people.

[32]One of these servants massages her like the Javanese still do
    (_pidjĕt_); another fans her or chases away annoying flies and
    gnats.

[33]I think it permitted to show the relation there is between this
    representation, and the placing of the _five_ Dhyâni-Buddhas we see
    on the highest (round) terraces, opposite to the _zenith_, and upon
    the encircling walls opposite to the four zones of heaven.

[34]Dr. Leemans thought he saw in this crescent of the moon the tips of
    a headkerchief. Had he seen the sculptures himself he would not have
    been mistaken in such a way. Siddhârta wears a crown (_makuta_), and
    this doesn’t match the headkerchief, neither does the Javanese
    _kuluq_ or ceremonial cap. Such crescents of the moon are also
    weared by Hâritî’s and Kuvera’s children on the two sculptures
    before the entrance of _tyanḍi Mĕndut_, but without headkerchiefs.

    Kern says that Buddha means both the awaking of the _sun_ and of the
    _moon_ and that the two celestial bodies also refer to Buddha on the
    other sculptures of the Båråbudur. Had the Dutch Government sent
    Leemans to Java, before he wrote his work, he should not have taken
    a _sénté_-leaf (_Alocasia macrorrhiza Schott_, an Aroïdee
    consequently) for a banana-leaf (_Musa_ L.,) but he should then have
    seen how even this leaf is still used by the Javanese as a
    provisional umbrella, and he should have understood why in former
    times it was carried as _ampilan_ after the saints and princes, just
    as the cow’s hair fly-fan. (tjemara).

[35]Occasionally called Gopa. Some people say these are the names of two
    women, and as the 45th sculpture (107 W. L.) represents him enjoying
    his domestic happiness the schemer should then have thought of two
    women. Ceylon writers know to tell us that 1000 men could not bend
    this bow, and that the blow of its string was heard at a distance of
    7000 miles. This bowshot which enabled him to gain his bride’s hand
    has been also mentioned in other legends—it _was once_ awarded to
    Râma in the _Ramâyâna_, and to _Arjuna_ in the _Mahâbhârata_. In
    _Homeros’ Odyssea_ Penelope’s lovers vainly try to do the same with
    _Odysseus’_ bow upon which all were convinced by his mastershot, and
    killed.

[36]The evil spirit had no authority over the fifth part of the world,
    the _zenith_.

[37]According to other people _muni_ means an anchoret or ascetic.

[38]Leemans calls him Arala Kalama.

[39]In Leeman’s work Rudra.

[40]The Javanese would now say _griyå råjå_, that is, _royal house_.

[41]Who these 5 apostles were in former lives another series of
    sculptures on the front wall of this gallery will teach us.

[42]On one of the sculptures at Parambanan we see the death of king
    Dasyaratha, Rama’s father, represented in almost the same manner.

[43]In “de Indische Gids” of 1887.

[44]The writings of the Mahâyânists have been written in _sanscrit_,
    those of the Hînayânists generally in the _pâli_ language.

[45]Speyer and other sanscrit scholars write: _Jâtaka_ according to an
    acknowledged manner of writing which replaces the Dutch _dj_ by the
    _j_, the _j_, by the _y_, the _tj_ by _c_. Because I also write for
    laymen who don’t know this writing I try to do my best to replace
    these consonants by our own, and therefore write _tyakra_ and
    _tyaitya_ instead of _cakra_ and _caitya_ what would seduce many a
    one to say _kakra_ and _kaitya_. In English of course, we write _j_
    instead of the Dutch _dj_.

[46]Engraving CXXXVIII and following ones.

[47]By the Dutch called: “the little man in the moon.” About such
    another jâtaka, explained by Van Erp, look at the bottom of this
    page.

[48]See above, the sculptures 73, 77, 78 and 117.

[49]This happens more amongst the _jâtakas_.

[50]Like anywhere we also see here the red _Nelumbium speciosum_ hewn as
    a lotus plant with its leaves and flower rising above the water; but
    not the white _Nymphaea Lotus_ the leaves and flowers of which are
    driving on the surface of the water.

[51]The _eternal_ hell of the Christians as a punishment for _temporary_
    sin the Buddhists don’t know.

[52]See W. L., 121, 123 and 125 of the upper series of the back-wall.

[53]In Mr. A. Tissandier’s work “_Cambodge et Java_” published by Mason
    at Paris in 1896, we find opposite page 124 a good engraving of this
    last sculpture (picture XXVIII); but the author, who even dares
    maintain that this whole series has nothing to do with Buddhism,
    says that it represents a young, richly diademed Hindu worshipping
    the bull (the _nandi_) of Shiva! By so much ignorance Tissandier
    blames his work, and ... himself. Striving we may err, but let us at
    any case _strive_ after science within reach.

[54]I thought we should not think here of the mythical subterranean
    serpents, but of a likewise called and fabulous tribe.

    But Mr. Foucher didn’t agree with me. The _nâgas_, he said, are
    generally hewn as serpents, but often as men with snaky hair.

[55]In the “Bijdragen van ’t Koninklijk Instituut” of 1907.

[56]Those who desire to know more about the deeper, mythical sense of
    these _jâtakas_ are kindly referred to professor Speyer’s essay or
    my “_Een karma-legende_” provided with 6 photo’s of the photographer
    _A. Winter_, published by the firm H. van Ingen at Surabaya.

[57]See at the bottom of this page.

[58]The _Jâtakamâlâ_ V, 15, tells us that the clouds “weeped like
    _water-jars turned about_.”

[59]See my above mentioned “_Karma legende_”.

[60]The difficulties we meet by placing the camera in the narrow space
    there is between the front and back-walls of the galleries have not
    yet been wholly obviated. Yet, it would be advisable to do what has
    turned out to be possible before that the sculptures should be lost
    for ever.

[61]In the _Ceylon_ pagoda at _Kelany_ I saw the Buddhists perform the
    _sĕmbah_ in the very same manner as done by the Javanese, and
    _Siam_’s king and queen when on the _Båråbudur_ and in _tyanḍi
    Mĕndut_, and in the same manner I saw this mark of veneration hewn
    on all the buddhistic imageries known to me. Perhaps, it was the
    Buddhists who once introduced this _sĕmbah_ in Java.

[62]See my illustrated work “_In den Kĕdaton te Jogjåkartå_” published
    in 1888 by _E. J. Brill_ at _Leyden_, picture II, and the IXth.
    photo of my illustrated work “_De garĕbĕgs te Jogjåkartå_”
    (published by the “_Royal Institute_” in 1895).

[63]At _Parambanan_ and _Pĕlahosan_ we already knew these deities to be
    _Bodhisattvas_. (See my above mentioned works: “_Tyanḍi Parambanan
    na de ontgraving_” and “_Boeddhistische tempel-en kloosterbouwvallen
    in de Parambanan vlakte_”.)

    Some time before the digging up of _Parambanan_ Mr. Groeneveldt
    wrote to me: “The theory as if these sculptures should represent
    known princes we must give up.”

    Çiva was one of the lokiçvaras of the Buddha-pantheon, and we know
    even other brahmin deities to have been admitted into this. Such is
    also the case with the holy queens of Leemans’ work who are _Târâs_
    or _Çaktis_ (wives or powers of deities).

[64]Till 1896 I also thought that these small Buddha images, we see in
    the crown, characterised the wearers as _Bodhisattvas_, that is, the
    Bodhisattvas of the _Dhyâni-Buddhas_ whose small images were hewn in
    the crowns. The king of _Siam_ denied this. Because of his being a
    buddhistic prince himself he also wore such small images in his
    crown. Moreover, I never saw another image in these crowns, except
    the one with the _two_ hands in his lap, which is to signify the
    _mudrâ dhyâna_ or meditation, a posture the Mahâyânists gave to the
    _fourth_ Dhyâni-Buddha, Amitâbha, the Redeemer of _this_ world. If
    now these small images were to characterise _Dhyâni-Bodhisattvas_,
    why, another Bodhisattva but Padmapâni the fourth, would have been
    never hewn.

    Should they refer to buddhistic _princes_ it then may be easily
    imagined that they never referred to another Buddha but the one of
    _this their_ world. On undeniable images these small ones therefore
    only point to the buddhistic character the northern church
    adjudicated to these deities.

[65]The crescent of the moon _Leemans_ ascribes to this sculpture we
    don’t see anywhere, but is to be perceived on the preceding one,
    105.

[66]On the _fourteenth_ sculpture on the front-wall of this gallery the
    sun and moon have been sculptured with _seven_ stars (planets?).

[67]“Oudheidkundige aanteekeningen” IV, p. 55-58.

[68]“Oudheidkundige Aanteekeningen” I and II.

[69]Dr. _Vogel_ doesn’t come.

    But I also do expect very much from the younger sanskritic scholar,
    Dr. N. J. Krom, the appointed president of the “_Oudheidkundige
    Kommissie_” whose acquaintance I’ve made to my great satisfaction.

    _Later note_, October 3^th 1910.

[70]I don’t know how it must have been possible for von Saher to see
    _linggas_ and _yonis_ in these buddhistic produce of art. Buddhism
    doesn’t know any _lingga_- or _yoni_-worship. See his “_Versierende
    kunsten in Ned: Oost-Indië_”, p. 15, 18, 21 and 64.

[71]When the sky is not overclouded we see from this point 9 volcanoes
    with the exception of the _Sindårå_ and _Diyèng_ which hid
    themselves behind the _Sumbing_-giant. This old volcano still rises
    3336 Metres above sea-level, the _Mĕrbabu_ and _Sindårå_ (or
    _Sĕndårå_) reach a height of 3145 Metres, the _Mĕrapi_ 2875 Metres,
    the far, not always visible _Slamĕt_ 3472 Metres; the adjacent
    neptunian _Mĕnoreh_ (or _Minoreh_) doesn’t reach more than 1000
    Metres.

    Never shall I forget the first night I partly spent on this full
    moon lit spot, a death past under, and over me the immortal light.
    This happened more than 37 years ago.

[72]The last mentioned estimation of name I got from a former _Magĕlang_
    regent, now called _haji_ or _kaji Danu ning Rat_. The Javanese
    generally wrote and write _buddå_, in Javanese characters: {Javanese
    script}

[73]According to Kern the word _ûrnâ_ means a symbol of both the _sun_
    and _lightning_.

[74]A young Dutchman, whom I met in 1898 in the Båråbudur’s
    pasanggrahan, thought he saw a mutual difference in the posture of
    the hands of these 72 dagob-Buddhas. This difference really exists,
    but only in the manner in which the different sculptors interpreted
    the _positively meant_ posture of the two hands.

    This very same difference in the execution of one and the same task
    is also to be seen on other Buddha images. Should it have another
    meaning the thesis that these sculptures are to represent the
    different five _Dhyâni-Buddhas_ would then be frustrated, because
    there would be _much more than five_, indeed.

    The man appealed to the official draughtsman accompanying him, an
    absolutely unscientific fellow.

[75]The other objects were a little metal vase with cover—formerly
    containing some ashes, perhaps—; some ancient javanese coins and
    another small metal image. In the pits of other _tyanḍis_ in Java we
    also found stone urns with ashes, and coins or other objects of
    precious metal, and some coloured precious stones which were given
    to the dead in their graves, and symbolically representing the
    _sapta ratna_ or _seven treasures_. See my “_Boeddhistische tempel-
    en klooster-bouwvallen in de Parambanan-vlakte_” and my “_Tjanḍi
    Idjo_” in the “_Tijdschrift v. Ind. T., L. en V. K._” published in
    1888.

[76]Out of the six Buddhas of the Båråbudur we don’t see any trace of a
    sixth Buddha such as we found in a different form at _Nipâl_:
    four-armed, in a mythical dress, crowned and provided with peculiar
    attributes.

[77]See my “_Een Boeddhisten-koning op den Båråbudur_” appeared in “_het
    Tijdschrift van Indische Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde_” of 1896, and
    the manuscript of the interpreting second part, not published by the
    editors, but of which I afterwards sent a copy to professor _Kern_
    and other learned men.

[78]On the twenty-seventh sculpture (W. L. 53).

[79]_I_ for me don’t know any analogue of these three groups though they
    may exist elsewhere in the mainland, so that this explanation of
    mine will be a questionable thesis only.

[80]See _Oldfield_’s “_Sketches from Nipal_” p. 90 and 157 and the
    pictures opposite p. 219 and 260 of the second volume.

[81]See my apologetics mentioned in VI note 14 and my “_Oudheidkundige
    Aanteekeningen_”, I.

[82]Notes of the “_Kon. Instituut_” (Royal Institute) from 1887, p. XCIV
    and following ones.

[83]G 5 has been wrongly marked with 6, just as the following one has
    been numbered G 6.

[84]Each _dagob_ is a _tyaitya_, but not each _tyaitya_ is a _dagob_.
    This word is only given to the depositary of one or more than one
    relic. See Kern’s “_Geschiedenis van het Boeddhisme in Indië_”, II
    p. 139 and following ones.

    In the same manner I saw _Ceylon_ Buddhists render due homage to the
    _dagob_ at _Kelany_.

[85]I’m not a Buddhist myself though I highly esteem the undegenerate
    Buddhism of the southern church.




                                ERRATA.


  p. 15 line 3 from bottom: ground instead of groud.
  p. 30 note 22 line 1 from top: as well instead of as weil.
  p. 38 line 7 from bottom to be read: the knot of hair on his crest,
          with the lotus-cushion and disc of the sun worshipped by
          princes and inferior people, by priests etc.
  p. 60 line 17 from top: but instead of bu.




                          Transcriber’s Notes


—Silently corrected a few typos, including listed errata.

—Retained publication information from the printed edition: this eBook
  is public-domain in the country of publication.

—In the text versions only, text in italics is delimited by
  _underscores_.






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