Mr. Groeneveldt, formerly the most competent authority on our Hindu sculptures in the Dutch Indies, thought the unfinished image of the middle-dagob to be a representation of the Adi-Buddha, and this would certainly have expounded this statue in it separately placing, if this immaterial primeval Buddha might have been ever represented in a material image. And there are more objections than only this impersonality of the divine primeval being materially revealing himself in the different Buddhas, and consequently not hewed at Nepâl and Tibet but only represented by a symbol, a circle or two eyes[80].
Would the mahâyânistic architects of the Båråbudur have acted in quite a different sense?
I don’t see any Dhyâni-Buddha in this Buddha, but only the perfect preacher having taken flesh as the Buddha, the Master, who, though he did die, continues to live as long as this his world will exist.
Each posture of the hands has its own meaning, and there are much more than five mudrâs even in the hînayânistic countries like Siam where one doesn’t know any Dhyâni-Buddha.
This also refers to the posture of the sixth, for a long time unexplained Buddha on the highest encircling wall whose mudrâ was rightly called dharma tyakra[81]. Thumb and index, circularly joined together, represent the tyakra, god Vishnu’s disc, the sun, the symbol of the dharma, the buddhistic Doctrine.
Buddha has been consequently hewed there as preacher, preaching the doctrine to all people, and consequently towards all the regions of heaven. And this teaching of the king-Buddhist has been perfectly confirmed by the fact that on all the sculptures (especially on those we also see on the backwall of the second gallery) the thumb and the index join each other in the very same manner.
That this preaching preacher has been placed upon the highest wall will be easily understood if we consider the preaching of the doctrine to be the highest vital expression of Buddhism, and possibly referred to both the world of the four zones of heaven and to the one of the celestials in the zenith.
XII.
A few remarks about the sculptures of the original foot of the outer-wall we didn’t discover before 1886. In 1890 I proposed them to be uncovered and photographed, afterwards they were covered again in the ancient manner, and hidden from sight.