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.