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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.