He also had no time necessary for a complete and decisive study of the sculptures we see on the 3 higher galleries. He only acknowledged their less historical or legendary sense but accepted their iconographic character. Some sculptures of the second gallery I thought to be Hindu-gods represented as Bodhisattvas, he, on the other hand, thought they were Avalokitésyvara, and Manjusyri. This does correspond at last to my meaning because Avalokitésyvara is nobody else but the deity Shiva, in this case Padmapâni, at the same time the fourth Dhyâni-Bodhisattva.
IX.
A short word about some sculptures we see on the three higher galleries. No double series are to be seen there, but the hewn panels, especially those of the back-walls of the second and fourth gallery, are a little higher, and have been partly modeled in an excellent style.
Wilsen’s and Leemans’ engravings are not always true representations of the sculptures themselves, f. i. no: 214 (W. L.) representing the unpardonably bad drawing of Maitrakanyaka’s mother. But for professor Speyer’s acute observation she would have been never recognised perhaps, and this group would then have remained unexplained for ever, if this sculpture, and so many other ones, might happen to be ruined at all. Fortunately enough, I ordered this group to be photographed for about 4 years ago, and these photos can’t possibly lie[59].
The productions, formerly taken by Mr. van Kinsbergen to the cost of the Dutch Government, are beyond my reach, and so I’ve not been able to control whether this sculpture has been photographed or not. I think it was not.[60].
Let me mention another example of Wilsen’s inaccuracy, the thirtieth sculpture we see on the back-wall of the second gallery, and so much the more, because it might have been easily photographed. More than one expert did so, among others, in 1901 (in my presence) the known Padang and Atyèh photographer C. Nieuwenhuis. Comparing this photo with Wilsen’s drawing we shall perceive that the two inner-pilasters of the small temple have been wrongly drawn, and that the outer-pilasters, behind the standing women, have been forgotten; that the prabha (glory) behind the saint’s head, we see sitting inside this small temple, impossibly goes upward before the upper-threshold of the entrance; and that the young lions and the throne’s carpet have been disfigured as well as the garlands and prayer-bells, both in form and placing. This also refers to the visitor’s parasol, and to the flower-offering we see near him. The second parrot, just above the right bodhi-tree, and one flower-piece to the right under this tree, have been wholly left out. This visitor’s hand flatly folded for a sĕmbah (salaam) has not been folded flatly, because the finger-tips only touch each other, so that the sĕmbah itself is to be recognised no more. The right foot of this man the drawer also forgot[61].
It is not difficult to show such mistakes in other drawings of Wilsen’s; and I therefore suppose them not to be relied upon for the explanation of further particulars.
There where Wilsen copied monks (bhiksyus) he nearly always raised them to Buddhas by decorating their clean-shaven heads with the hair-crown, the tiara or usynîsya! as if he, who didn’t even know the text the sculptor had followed, knew far better than the latter! And don’t we know how he, just like Ovid in his Metamorphoses, changed women into men or otherwise?
I further point to the above mentioned sculpture because of the worship of the bodhi-tree characterised by parasols and tyĕmaras (fly-flaps), rosettes and prayer-bells. Such fig-trees are still cultivated and honoured by all the Ceylon (and elsewhere) pagodae even at this day, and in consequence of this worship by buddhistic ancestors the Sundas and Javanese always respect kiaras and wĕringins (banyan-trees) and other akin Ficaceae.
Such trees as we always see on the alun-aluns, the front-places of kratons and dalĕms of princes and native chiefs originally meant, I think, a recognition to Buddha’s fig-tree. The preacher and his doctrine are forgotten here in Java, but one of the forms of this worship still exists.