Those who require, or desire, a better insight into the ancient Buddhism, and those who wish to know more about its sanctuaries to be found here in Java and elsewhere in India, are kindly referred to the works I consulted by the study of this subject, and to those I wrote myself and which have been for the greater part mentioned in or at the bottom of the text of this little book.
Granting Buddhism to have been lost in Java and elsewhere in India,—yet, it still exists, more or less degenerated, still counting more followers than any other religion ever counted, and its lucky freedom from bigotry, especially in the hînayânistic countries, and noble doctrine of love and self-command is raised above all suspicion[85].
Jogjakartå, October, November 1906, and 1911.
FOOTNOTES.
[1]See, among others, H. Kern’s “Geschiedenis van het Boeddhisme”, II, page 308 and following ones, and Dr. S. Lefman’s “Geschichte des alten Indiëns”, Berlin 1880, page 768 and following ones, and the engravings on page 769 and the picture “Der Açokafelsen van Girnaroden Junàgadh im Jahre 1869”, in the 3d number of this work opposite to page 257.
[2]See my illustrated work published in 1893 by “het Koninklijk Instituut voor de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde van N. I.” entitled: “Tyanḍi Parambanan na de ontgraving” and therein the photo’s of many deities represented as Bodhisatthvas, and my “Boeddhistische tempel- en klooster-bouwvallen in de Parambanan-vlakte”. Surabaya 1907.
[3]In the Buddha pagodae I visited in Ceylon, at Colombo and its environs, I saw badly hewn or coloured images of Shiva and of Ganesja. The monks called these images the representations of Buddha.
[4]See the English translation of his “Record of the Buddhist Religion as practised in India and the Malay Archipelago (A. D. 671-695)” by the Japanese scholar I Takakusu., provided with a preface of prof Max Müller and published by the Clarendon press at Oxford in 1896. Pages XXII, XXV, XXXIX and XLVIII of the “General Introduction.”
[5]In a temple at Kandy in Ceylon is kept a tooth which, though of animal origin, took the place of a former so-called Buddha-tooth which has been destroyed by fire. This tooth, named Dalada, is taken care of, and honoured too. And the holiest pagoda in this island, the Thuparama, possesses one of Buddha’s clavicles, according to the assertion of its believers certainly with as much right as the Catholic Christians maintain the genuineness of many a relic of Jesus and the apostles.
[6]Even the ashes of other saints, princes and noble men, of gurus or teachers, of priests or monks, were occasionally put away in such graves upon which arose the glorious mausolea the ruins of which we still admire at this day.