And so I gathered all data for an up-to-date fifth edition in behalf of the continually increasing number of visitors who come to visit these incomparable temples, which, in spite of expensive but insufficient restoration, seem doomed to decay.
G.
Jogyårkartå 1906.
Having succeeded at last in finding a person from whose hand both the editor and myself express a wish to see a good English translation of this little book, I consequently completed and rewrote the former text (1906-1907.).
CONTENTS.
Page. [Preface] 3 [Buddhistic temples in Prågå-valley] 5 [Tyanḍi Mĕndut] 13 [Tyanḍi Pawon] 23 [Tyanḍi Båråbudur] 26 [Concluding word] 90 [Errata] 92
Ruins of Buddhistic temples in Prågå-valley.
I.
The Buddhists believe their community, their worship, their church, or whatever one may be inclined to call this, to have been founded 24 centuries ago by the wise and humane king’s son of Kapilavastu, called Gautama, the Shâkja muni or wise Shâkja, Buddha or the Enlightened. All that which the later legends related either of Buddha himself or of his former lives, they consider historically true.
Competent Orientalists, among whom the Dutch ex-professor Dr. H. Kern, stated however that, much about those legends that cannot be true from a historical point of view, will become quite comprehensible and possible as soon as taken in a mythical sense, and when we understand the hero of the myth to be a sun-god. And then it will be perfectly indifferent to us, non-Buddhists, whether those legends may or may not have historical foundations and whether the Buddha of the Buddhists may have really lived and existed or not.