[15]This cone’s top has been removed again because of Mr. van Erp’s having been unable to prove his reproduction of this cone with its umbrellas to be incontestably true.
[16]This idea of mine about the graduation of the Båråbudur’s origin is given as a questionable hypothesis. However great the consequences were, we can not know until we have compared the alto-relievoes of these and other Javanese Hindu-temples with the artless wall-paintings I saw in the Ceylon pagodae.
[17]Buddha himself thought it useless to pray, but the Buddhists of later times prayed however, but didn’t worship the images themselves. The Chinese—very degenerated Buddhists—light their pipes on the flames of the consecrated waxcandles burning on the altar, and consider this no sacrilege.
[18]According to Rhys Davids’s work, nirvâna means the state of holiness which ripes man for death without regeneration, the so-called parinirvâna. But the signification of nirvâna itself differs in proportion to time and caste.
[19]This superstratum is about 2,5 yard high and 7 yards wide. The lower terrace on the outside was about 3 yards wider, and 1 yard high. These numbers are nearly just and sufficient enough to my purpose.
[20]At that time I could not have thought of a permanent uncovering, because the preservation of the whole ruin would have required retain-walls too expensive, and too much disfiguring the temple itself. The architect van de Kamer thought it afterwards possible, but expensive, to have the ruin restored again, and its original foot permanently uncovered. Sunlight, heat and rain-water however, would do much to its decay unless the ruin itself became wholly covered. Otherwise the time-worn joints becoming more and more wide would admit much more rain-water between the stones into the earth of the hill under the ruin, and this earth would then be carried away more rapidly than is the case now, and have the ruin spoilt and decayed.
[21]Above the first discovered imageries of the foot we found inscriptions in ancient Javanese characters scratched in stone. On this ground the Society, presided by myself, proposed the Dutch Government to have the whole temple’s foot uncovered (in the only way possible) without endangering the foot itself, whilst the cost was estimated at £ 768. The Government put up with it, and granted the necessary sum for the budget of 1890.
[22]As well as so many angels painted by our artists don’t always represent a Gabriel, a Raphael or a Michael.
[23]Bulletin de l’école française d’Extrême Orient, I, No: 1 page 21-22.
[24]Both this Nâga and Garuḍa are mythical beings who adopt different shapes.