Humboldt first noted the five different attitudes of the seated figures, and their likeness to the five Dhyani Buddhas of Nepal; and the discovery of a tablet in Sumatra recording the erection of a seven-story vihara to the Dhyani Buddha was proof that the faith that first came pure from the mouth of the Oxus and the Indus must have received later bent through missionaries from the Malay Peninsula and Tibet. The Boro Boedor images have the same lotus cushion and aureole, the same curls of hair, but not the long ears of the Nepal Buddhas, who in the Mongol doctrine had each his own paradise or quarter of the earth. The first Dhyani, who rules the paradise of the Orient, is always represented in the same attitude and pose of the hands as the image in the latticed bells of these upper, circular or Nirvana terraces of Boro Boedor. The images on the east side of Boro Boeder’s square terraces correspond to the second Dhyani’s conventional pose; those on the south walls, to the third Dhyani; the west-facing ones, to the fourth Dhyani; and the northern ones, to the fifth Dhyani of Nepal.
There are no inscriptions visible anywhere in this mass of picture-writings, no corner-stone or any clue to the exact year of its founding. We know certainly that the third great synod of Buddhists in Asoka’s time, 264 B. C., resolved to spread Buddhism abroad, and that the propaganda begun in Ceylon was carried in every direction, and that Asoka opened seven of the eight original dagobas of India enshrining relics of Buddha’s body, and, subdividing, put them in eighty-four thousand vases or precious boxes, that were scattered to the limits of that religious world. Stupas, or dagobas, were built over these holy bits, and all the central dagoba of Boro Boedor is believed to have been the original structure built over some such reliquary, and afterward surrounded by the great sculptured terraces. Fa Hian, the Chinese pilgrim who visited Java in 414 A. D., remarked upon the number of “heretics and Brahmans” living there, and noted that “the law of Buddha is not much known.” Native records tell that in 603 A. D. the Prince of Gujerat came, with five thousand followers in one hundred and six ships, and settled at Mataram, where two thousand more men of Gujerat joined him, and a great Buddhist empire succeeded that of the Brahmanic faith. An inscription found in Sumatra, bearing date 656 A. D., gives the name of Maha Raja Adiraja Adityadharma, King of Prathama (Great Java), a worshiper of the five Dhyani Buddhas, who had erected a great seven-storied vihara, evidently this one of Boro Boedor, in their honor. This golden age of the Buddhist empire in Java lasted through the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries. Arts and religion had already entered their decline in the tenth century, when the Prince Dewa Kosoumi sent his daughter and four sons to India to study religion and the arts. The princelings returned with artists, soldiers, and many trophies and products; but this last fresh importation did not arrest the decay of the faith, and the people, relapsing peaceably into Brahmanism, deserted their old temples. With the Mohammedan conquest of 1475-79 the people in turn forsook the worship of Siva, Durga, and Ganesha, and abandoned their shrines at Brambanam and elsewhere, as they had withdrawn from Boro Boedor and Chandi Sewou.
ON THE SECOND TERRACE.
When the British engineers came to Boro Boedor, in 1814, the inhabitants of the nearest village had no knowledge or traditions of this noblest monument Buddhism ever reared. Ever since their fathers had moved there from another district it had been only a tree-covered hill in the midst of forests. Two hundred coolies worked forty-five days in clearing away vegetation and excavating the buried terraces. Measurements and drawings were made, and twelve plates from them accompany Sir Stamford Raffles’s work. After the Dutch recovered possession of Java, their artists and archæologists gave careful study to this monument of earlier civilization and arts. Further excavations showed that the great platform or broad terrace around the temple mass was of later construction than the body of the pyramid, that a flooring nine feet deep had been put entirely around the lower walls, presumably to brace them, and thus covering many inscriptions the meanings of which have not yet been given, not to English readers at least. Dutch scientists devoted many seasons to the study of these ruins, and Herr Brumund’s scholarly text, completed and edited by Dr. Leemans of Leyden, accompanies and explains the great folio volumes of four hundred plates, after Wilsen’s drawings, published by the Dutch government in 1874. Since their uncovering the ruins have been kept free from vegetation, but no other care has been taken. In this comparatively short time legends have grown up, local customs have become fixed, and Boro Boedor holds something of the importance it should in its immediate human relations.
For more than six centuries the hill-temple was lost to sight, covered with trees and rank vegetation; and when the Englishmen brought the great sculptured monument to light, the gentle, easily superstitious Javanese of the neighborhood regarded these recha—statues and relics of the ancient, unknown cult—with the greatest reverence. They adopted them as tutelary divinities, as it were, indigenous to their own soil. While Wilsen lived there the people brought daily offerings of flowers. The statue on the first circular terrace at the right of the east staircase, and the secluded image at the very summit, were always surrounded with heaps of stemless flowers laid on moss and plantain-leaves. Incense was burned to these recha, and the people daubed them with the yellow powder with which princes formerly painted, and even humble bridegrooms now paint, themselves on festal days, just as Burmese Buddhists daub gold-leaf on their shrines, and, like the Cingalese Buddhists, heap champak and tulse, jasmine, rose, and frangipani flowers, before their altars. When questioned, the people owned that the offerings at Boro Boedor were in fulfilment of a vow or in thanksgiving for some event in their lives—a birth, death, marriage, unexpected good fortune, or recovery from illness. Other worshipers made the rounds of the circular terraces, reaching to touch each image in its latticed bell, and many kept all-night vigils among the dagobas of the Nirvana circles. Less appealing was the custom, that grew up among the Chinese residents of Djokjakarta and its neighborhood, of making the temple the goal of general pilgrimage on the Chinese New Year’s day. They made food and incense offerings to the images, and celebrated with fireworks, feasts, and a general May-fair and popular outdoor fête.
