XI.
It only remains for me now to add a short description to the Buddha sculptures which made the ruin call: Båra-buddå or Pårå buddå, that is, the many or conjoint Buddhas.[72].
All of them are in a sitting posture with crossed legs, almost in the same posture the Javanese call silå, but upright.
They are dressed in a thin mantle uncovering their right arms and shoulders—such as the monks of the southern church wear their cowls—and have the tiara, the round hair-knot, on their heads all covered with short curls. Even the ûrnâ, the little tuft of hair on their fronts is still to be seen on many a sculpture, and on the other ones, less accurately hewn, they are forgotten[73].
The posture of all of them tells resignation and peace, and may speak of the later final dissolving in the nirvâna, the joy- and painless not-to-be.
But the sculptor didn’t succeed in interpreting all the sculptures in this sense. Not all the sculptors had been equally good artists for they must have had much more work the best of them might have finished alone.
Among the sculptures placed opposite the five zones of heaven, the East, South, West and North and the Zenith, there is to be seen a slight difference in the posture of the right hands, and something more difference in the posture of the two hands with regard to those sculptures we see on the round terraces. All the sculptures on the five encircling walls have been hewn with their left hands in their laps, that is, with the palm on the right foot. Those on the four lower walls have (on the east side) their right hands with their backs, on the south side these very same hands with the palms upwards on the right knees; those of the west (opposite to the setting sun) hold both their hands in their laps, and those of the north rise their right hands a little above the right thigh, palm forward, and the five fingers closed together in a perpendicular line.
The sculptures of the whole fifth and highest walls dominating all the regions of heaven only distinguish themselves from those on the northern lower walls by means of the bent index of the raised right hand forming a closed circle with the somewhat joined thumb, that is, because of the stone’s brittleness.
The sculptures of the open worked tyaityas on the three round terraces however, raise their two hands before the epigastric region, the left one with the palm and the bent finger-tips in an upward direction, the right one with the palm to the left and the fingers bent over those of the other hand[74]. Moreover, they all miss the glory and have not been placed in open temple-niches above a human and mythical- and animal world represented by many sculptures, but hewn in transparently closed graves, and in higher spheres above this world. There is consequently more difference than between the sculptures of the five encircling walls.
There is still another sculpture unique of its kind.
When, a long time ago, in the beginning of our last century, the middle-dagob was opened a double space was found inside, a smaller above a larger one, and, among others, a Buddha image corresponding in size to all other sculptures, whereas the posture of the hands tallied with those on the eastern lower walls[75].
This image having been unfinished can’t be ascribed to the merest chance or to an untimely stop of the temple-building, because the dagob itself, where it had been wholly closed in, was finished afterwards.
So it must have been intentionally left in this state, but I can’t possibly accept the supposition that it should refer to the future [fifth] Dhyâni-Buddha in state of being.
A future, not yet existing Buddha can’t be materialized by a half-sculptured image, and the fifth Dhyâni-Buddha is never hewed in the posture of the hands of the second, but always, such as on the northern lower walls, in his own mudrâ whereas the future Buddhas as Bodhisattvas were represented not only in other postures but also in another dress and ornament and with their own attributes.
Besides, the hypothesis challenged by me would not yet solve still existing mysteries, but would only give rise to other enigmas which don’t bring us any farther.
The explanation of the fact may be much simpler.
I think it may have been considered quite unnecessary to finish a sculpture in such an accurate manner like all the other ones, if it should be hidden from sight for ever.
What is the meaning of these different Buddhas?
According to the posture of the hands we may divide them into six—according to other data into three groups. Nothing more and nothing less.
The three groups are:
1. The 432 Buddhas of the open temple-niches on the five richly hewed encircling walls, all of them seated on lotus-thrones and crowned with glories.
2. The 72 Buddhas of the open worked tyaityas on the three round terraces, without any glory or lotus-throne but represented by the padmâsana of the tyaitya-foot. But even the human and animal world hewn under the niche-Buddhas we don’t see there again.
3. The only Buddha of the large dagob entirely sequestered, without glory or throne, but seated above the padmâsana which carries the whole dagob.
The posture of the hands however, ought to refer to six groups, because there are six different mudrâs.
Wilhelm von Humboldt was the first who considered five of the six Buddhas to be the representations of the five Dhyâni-Buddhas.
Three of them: Vairotyana, Akshobhya and Ratna Sambhava successively redeemed and ruled over three following former worlds; the fourth, Amitâbha—our Gautama or Shakya-muni—ruled over our world these 24 centuries, and is said to be succeeded, after the creation of a new world, by the fifth and last, Amogasiddha, the Buddha of love.
Especially in the posture of the hands there is some conformity between five of the six Båråbudur-images and the five Dhyâni-Buddhas such as we see them hewed in Asia. But there are also some points of difference.
In the Mongol countries, for instance, the two first Dhyâni-Buddhas are throning in the East; the third in the South, the fourth in the West and the fifth in the North[76].
Taking, according to the posture of the hands, the images of our ruins to be Dhyâni-Buddhas the East would then be only occupied by the second and the zenith by the first of them, that is, above the round terraces which don’t dominate any region of heaven. But this happens more elsewhere in Asia.
But which will be the sixth Buddha represented there by all the sculptures of the fifth and highest encircling wall, and dominating all the zones of heaven, but which can’t be a Dhyâni-Buddha?
That’s a new enigma rightly explained by the king of Siam, I suppose,[77] and which I’m going to show directly.
And that the unfinished Buddha of the large dagob can’t represent the fifth Dhyâni-Buddha appears from the posture of the hands which would refer to the second, 92 times hewed on the eastern lower-walls.
Should it represent a Dhyâni-Buddha, it must be this one and for such an idea I can’t find any reason.
Had the Mahâyânists had the intention to place there one of their five Dhyâni-Buddhas, they surely would have rendered homage to their own Redeemer, the fourth. The four other ones may have only had a legendary-historical sense, consequently also the second. In spite of the mudrâ of this second Dhyâni-Buddha the image itself should not be meant as Akshobhya, but simply as the perfect Buddha, the Shakya having taking flesh as Buddha—for this is the meaning of this mudrâ even to the Buddhists of the southern church who don’t know several Dhyânis but the only Buddha.
And as these five Dhyâni-Buddhas don’t wholly explain the images of the Båråbudur, and don’t wholly expound the sixth, I therefore thought it reasonable to take all the Buddhas of the five encircling walls as one separated group, those of the three circular terraces as a second, and the ones of the closed dagob as the only representative of a third, whereas the placing of the sculptures on these five walls should be connected with the five zones of heaven Siddhârta took possession of after his birth[78].
Should this group represent the Buddha perhaps, with reference to the human- and animal world described by the sculptures hewed beneath there, we then may refer to Wilsen’s and Leemans’ and accept the images (taken from the mentioned world) of the upper-terraces to be the Buddha as Arahat in a state of supreme purity or holiness, in the nirvâna, perhaps. The Buddha wholly enclosed by the large dagob, and so positively separated from the world, may refer to the parinirvâna, that is, the wholly dissolving in the infinite not-to-be; death without regeneration, the final purpose of all life[79].
For this dagob is a closed grave in which for about, or at least, eleven centuries ago the Buddhists may have hidden the vase containing some ashes of the really died Buddha; a trace of the remainders of the great wise man, the spotless preacher; a minim quantity of the Master’s ashes, the divine redeemer of all that lives and suffers, that thinks, feels and dies.
Mr. Foucher starts from the principle that he doesn’t like to contradict the explanation as if these Buddha images were to represent Dhyâni-Buddhas, but he means that they should be examined more closely, and completed, and that the different groups ought to be judged again after severe study.
As for the present he discerns:
1, the bhunisparsya mudrâ in the 92 niches on the 4 first walls to the East;
2, to the South the vara-mudrâ;
3, to the West the dhyâni-mudrâ;
4, to the North the abhaya-mudrâ, and
5, in the 64 niches on the fifth and highest wall the vitarka-mudrâ (the gesture of discussion) and higher, among the 72 cupolae of the 3 circular terraces:
6, the dharma-tyakra-mudrâ (mark of distinction), and finally the only sculpture from the wholly closed dagob, hewed in the bhumi-sparsya-mudrâ.
So there is a slight difference between Foucher’s idea about the north-indian Mahâyânists and my defended explanation of the Siam Hînayânists.
“This is Buddha preaching the tyakra” said king Tsyula Longkorn to me, “and this means the tyakra”, joining the tops of the thumb and the index of his right hand so as to form something like a circle.
This seemed convincing to me, and I found this idea confirmed not only on all and still undamaged statues on the highest wall, but also, and especially, on a great many relievoes of the second gallery which represent the Buddha in a preaching posture.
It is true that the exactness of this view of mine had been indirectly denied by my great official antagonist, the late Dr. Brandes, but never did he dispute or refute this scientifically.
Mr. Groeneveldt, formerly the most competent authority on our Hindu sculptures in the Dutch Indies, thought the unfinished image of the middle-dagob to be a representation of the Adi-Buddha, and this would certainly have expounded this statue in it separately placing, if this immaterial primeval Buddha might have been ever represented in a material image. And there are more objections than only this impersonality of the divine primeval being materially revealing himself in the different Buddhas, and consequently not hewed at Nepâl and Tibet but only represented by a symbol, a circle or two eyes[80].
Would the mahâyânistic architects of the Båråbudur have acted in quite a different sense?
I don’t see any Dhyâni-Buddha in this Buddha, but only the perfect preacher having taken flesh as the Buddha, the Master, who, though he did die, continues to live as long as this his world will exist.
Each posture of the hands has its own meaning, and there are much more than five mudrâs even in the hînayânistic countries like Siam where one doesn’t know any Dhyâni-Buddha.
This also refers to the posture of the sixth, for a long time unexplained Buddha on the highest encircling wall whose mudrâ was rightly called dharma tyakra[81]. Thumb and index, circularly joined together, represent the tyakra, god Vishnu’s disc, the sun, the symbol of the dharma, the buddhistic Doctrine.
Buddha has been consequently hewed there as preacher, preaching the doctrine to all people, and consequently towards all the regions of heaven. And this teaching of the king-Buddhist has been perfectly confirmed by the fact that on all the sculptures (especially on those we also see on the backwall of the second gallery) the thumb and the index join each other in the very same manner.
That this preaching preacher has been placed upon the highest wall will be easily understood if we consider the preaching of the doctrine to be the highest vital expression of Buddhism, and possibly referred to both the world of the four zones of heaven and to the one of the celestials in the zenith.