Imagine a structure upon an eminence from which it is visible for miles, yet walled in on one side by a lofty range of mountains, and on the other side commanding a magnificent view of cultivated plains. Imagine a temple of brick, like the great pyramid of Egypt, more than five hundred feet square, with five broad terraces, the uppermost of which encloses an immense sitting statue of Buddha. The topmost crown of this solid structure rises more than two hundred feet above the ground.
The wonder of Boro Budor is, however, not the vastness of the structure, containing though it does an amount of material five times as great as that of any English cathedral, so much as it is the enormous amount of artistic work that has been expended upon it. Each of these five terraces has sculptured upon its side walls some representation in bas-relief of the legendary incidents of Buddha's existence, not only in the present state, but in his previous states of being. You walk, as it were, through a picture-gallery of the life of Buddha. The bas-reliefs are wrought out with such delicacy as to suggest the influence of Greek art upon the multitude of artists who toiled for years to produce them. The effect, at least, is Grecian; and the number of the plaques is so great that, if they were placed in a continuous row, the line would be three miles long.
Besides these sculptures, the terrace-walls are interrupted at regular intervals by four hundred and thirty-six niches or alcove-chapels, each with its image of Buddha facing the outside world, so that the visitor approaching the temple cannot fail to see one hundred and nine Buddhas, or one-fourth of the total number, looking down upon him. Above these alcove-chapels there are seventy-two small latticed domes, or dagobas, each with its statue of Buddha imprisoned within, as if he were preparing himself, by seclusion and meditation, for the final state in which the great chamber which crowns the structure represents him, I mean the state of passivity and bliss, which has escaped the evils of transmigration and has attained to absorption of personal existence of the impersonal world-force which the Hindu called Brahma.
It is difficult to express the emotions which are roused by such an exhibition of man's religious instinct, enlightened simply by God's revelation of himself in the natural world and in the nature of man. Here is a seeking, but not a finding, a groping in the dark, with only the faint rays of conscience to show man the way. Yet he who is the Light of the World was lighting every man, before his advent in the flesh, and even Buddha was a reformer and an advance upon the Brahmanism of his time. He preached the doctrine of unselfish devotion, but he turned it into error by ignoring man's duty to himself. He made extinction of desire, rather than purification of desire, to be the way to happiness. How different this from that thirst after God, even the living God, which animated the Psalmist, or that hungering and thirsting after righteousness which Christ says shall be filled! Buddha found in self, rather than in God, the power to overcome evil. Buddhism has no personal God to whom appeal may be made for strength, and Buddha himself has no power to answer prayer, since he long ago passed into a realm of inactivity which is practically indistinguishable from non-existence. There is no atonement for past sin nor escape from its consequences, but by the giving up of being. Buddhism is a pessimistic and joyless religion. Hence it suffers deterioration in competition with the more active systems. Close by Boro Budor, where Buddhism reached its culmination, are the temples of Mendoet and Brambanam, which show a reversion in the popular mind to Hindu Brahmanism. And when the Moslem came, with his doctrine of a personal and living God, Buddhism had no force to combat it. Boro Budor, once the center of worship for a mighty kingdom, now stands alone and desolate in a great wilderness, without priest or worshiper. Djokjokarta, the next city in size to Batavia, is to-day more Mohammedan than Buddhist. Christian schools and missions are doing much to turn this moral wilderness into beauty. To convert Java to Christianity will add to Christ's subjects the very Queen of the East.
XIV
THE RENAISSANCE IN INDIA
A recent book by Prof. C. F. Andrews, formerly of the Cambridge Brotherhood in Delhi, has arrested my attention, as the best extant synopsis of the religious history and prospects of that great country. It is entitled "The Renaissance in India." It has not yet been reprinted in America, and can be obtained only in the British Isles. I have thought it worth while to make it known among us by writing a review, and the following paper might perhaps serve such a purpose. But, in the writing, so many thoughts and illustrations of my own have suggested themselves, that I cannot credit Professor Andrews with the result, except in part, and I submit my work as my own almost as much as it is his.
Let me first, however, do Professor Andrews the justice of explaining that the Cambridge Brotherhood is a semimonastic fraternity of the Church of England, which aims to convert India to Christianity by indoctrinating its higher classes. All its members are bachelors, and their pure life as well as their learning and liberality are attractive to educated heathen seekers after God. Our author is himself a devout believer in a preexistent Christ, and he recognizes some rays of Christ's light in Buddha and in Confucius. This faith has led him to sever his connection with the Cambridge Brotherhood of late, and to connect himself with the school of Rabindranath Tagore, whom the British Government has recently knighted for his poetical gifts and for his political loyalty. Members of the Brotherhood have thought this leaving of their body a mistake of judgment, and too great a concession to a rival religion, while they still admire the self-devotion which leads their former brother to carry his advocacy of Christianity into what he regards as the most promising school of Hinduism. With this explanation I proceed to the treatment of my subject.