[7]It won’t do maintaining that these dagobs should have been formed after the lotus, the holy padma, and that its openings in the transparent dagobs on the round terraces above the Båråbudur must represent the empty seed-holes of the nursery of the ripe lotus. The leaves of a lotus (Nelumbium speciosum Willd) fall off before bending downward, and then the pericarp only remains on its stem like a urned cone or cupola whose flat, uprighted and afterwards, by the sagging of the withering stem, downrighted base has been stung by the seed-holes. Not the bell-shaped sides, for they remain closed. So these openings must have quite another sense than the one derived from the natural form of the lotus-plant.
Only the red lotus, the Nelumbium speciosum referring to all this, and recognisable by its peduncles and leaf stalks rising high above the water, has been frequently represented on Hindu temples. But not the white lotus, the Nymphae Lotus Linn., the leaves and flowers of which are floating on the surface of the water.
[8]Professor Kern wrote to me that the alphabetical writing of the inscriptions we see on some demi-relievoes on the outer-walls should date from the year 800, or thereabouts, of the Shaka era, thus our ninth century. And this rather corresponds to the age of the Buddha temples in the plain of Parambanan. Does not a stone of one of these tyanḍis testify to this temple’s having been built in the year 701 of the shaka era, and dedicated to the service of Târâ in honour of the prince’s guru or teacher, who may have been buried there? And in the year 415 the Chinese Buddhist, Fa Hien, when in Java, came across many a brahmin Hindu. He didn’t speak about Buddhists, but this circumstance alone does not prove his not having met co-religionists, nor does it produce any evidence of their non-existence in the interior of Java he didn’t visit probably. I Tsing see note says that the inhabitants of Java and of the other islands of the Archipelago principally embraced Hînayânism. “Buddhism was ... chiefly the Hînayâna” (page XLVII), and “the ten or more islands of the Southern Sea (Sumatra, Java etc.) generally belong to the Hînayâna.” (page XXX). Such happened in our seventh century.
[9]See his essay about Aymonier’s: “Le Cambodge”, I, written in the “Bulletin de l’Ecole française d’Extréme-Orient”, II, page 83 note 4.
[10]Attap means palm-fronds used for thatch by the Javanese (Chambers).
The scaffolding has been removed since, and the stone roof was rebuilt by the major engineer Van Erp. 1911.
[11]This prabha has been also restored. 1911.
[12]The heavy colonnades of which will be sacrificed to the swelling waters of the river Nile. But they are doomed to destruction because this stream must vivify the rainless country.
[13]I, number 3, p. 249 and II, number 1, p. 20 and 30.
[14]“Oudheidkundige Aanteekeningen” IV, p. 59 and 60.