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 5th panel after the 7th angle past the eastern staircase, which shows us the killing of Siddhârta’s elephant by his angry nephew Dervadatta.