That’s a new enigma rightly explained by the king of Siam, I suppose,[77] and which I’m going to show directly.
And that the unfinished Buddha of the large dagob can’t represent the fifth Dhyâni-Buddha appears from the posture of the hands which would refer to the second, 92 times hewed on the eastern lower-walls.
Should it represent a Dhyâni-Buddha, it must be this one and for such an idea I can’t find any reason.
Had the Mahâyânists had the intention to place there one of their five Dhyâni-Buddhas, they surely would have rendered homage to their own Redeemer, the fourth. The four other ones may have only had a legendary-historical sense, consequently also the second. In spite of the mudrâ of this second Dhyâni-Buddha the image itself should not be meant as Akshobhya, but simply as the perfect Buddha, the Shakya having taking flesh as Buddha—for this is the meaning of this mudrâ even to the Buddhists of the southern church who don’t know several Dhyânis but the only Buddha.
And as these five Dhyâni-Buddhas don’t wholly explain the images of the Båråbudur, and don’t wholly expound the sixth, I therefore thought it reasonable to take all the Buddhas of the five encircling walls as one separated group, those of the three circular terraces as a second, and the ones of the closed dagob as the only representative of a third, whereas the placing of the sculptures on these five walls should be connected with the five zones of heaven Siddhârta took possession of after his birth[78].
Should this group represent the Buddha perhaps, with reference to the human- and animal world described by the sculptures hewed beneath there, we then may refer to Wilsen’s and Leemans’ and accept the images (taken from the mentioned world) of the upper-terraces to be the Buddha as Arahat in a state of supreme purity or holiness, in the nirvâna, perhaps. The Buddha wholly enclosed by the large dagob, and so positively separated from the world, may refer to the parinirvâna, that is, the wholly dissolving in the infinite not-to-be; death without regeneration, the final purpose of all life[79].
For this dagob is a closed grave in which for about, or at least, eleven centuries ago the Buddhists may have hidden the vase containing some ashes of the really died Buddha; a trace of the remainders of the great wise man, the spotless preacher; a minim quantity of the Master’s ashes, the divine redeemer of all that lives and suffers, that thinks, feels and dies.
Mr. Foucher starts from the principle that he doesn’t like to contradict the explanation as if these Buddha images were to represent Dhyâni-Buddhas, but he means that they should be examined more closely, and completed, and that the different groups ought to be judged again after severe study.
As for the present he discerns:
1, the bhunisparsya mudrâ in the 92 niches on the 4 first walls to the East;