Behind the dead one we see stand two monks pouring their vases to purify the corpse before the cremation will make an end to his material existence.
On the last sculpture (239 W. L., 3 after the last angle) the Buddha thrones in the very same posture, as the glorification of death, as the immortal Talhâgata who, in spite of his material death, continues to live in his holy doctrine, and who can never die as such.
That the study of Foucher’s work could also assist me in finding the sense of some other not comprehended sculptures may appear from the 5th panel after the 7th angle past the eastern staircase, which shows us the killing of Siddhârta’s elephant by his angry nephew Dervadatta.
VIII.
When, for more than thirty years ago, I began to study the majestic ruin, I thought (like I afterwards wrote[43] in my first essay about the Båråbudur) many other imageries, at least those of the undermost series of the back wall, and those of the uppermost row on the front wall of this first gallery, to be the representations of Buddha’s former lives, of the jâtakas of the man honoured by all the Buddhists of the northern and the southern church as the Redeemer of this world, the Dhyâni-Buddha of the Mahâyânists, for the last time reincarnated for about 25 centuries ago, and who enjoyed the rest of the nirvâna after having finished his heavenly task, but in order to reveal himself once more to a future world, that is, as the Redeemer of not yet existing beings.
When in July 1896 I attended the king of Siam for three days on his journey to the ruins, this royal Buddhist expressed the same supposition, especially with regard to the lower series on the back wall of this first gallery.
But I could not possibly study these jâtakas as long as I didn’t know any translation of the original sanscrit- or pâli text[44] in one of the languages known to me.
In 1893 professor J. S. Speyer published in the “Bydragen van ’t Koninklijk Instituut” an English translation of 34 of these legends derived from a sanscrit manuscript, the so-called Jâtakamâla or the wreath of birth stories[45].
And in the same “Bijdragen”, but in those of 1897, professor Kern gave a translation of an essay which had appeared from the hand of the Russian Orientalist Sergius E. Oldenburg—as far as it concerned the Båråbudur—who discussed the representations of a few jâtakas on different monuments whereas Dr. Kern had been so kind as to inform me of them by letter.
It therefore became possible for me to recognise in the two mentioned series some of the legends treated in Speyer’s Jâtakamâlâ, and moreover, show some other ones elsewhere.