All the children wear a crescent of the moon on the hind part of their heads, but both the children and their parents miss everything that might have spoken of a buddhistic character. The prince himself wears a three stringed cord of a caste (upavîta), and is therefore characterised as a not buddhistic one. Buddhism doesn’t know any caste.
Nevertheless, there are Dutch scholars who suppose this prince to be Buddha’s father, this woman Buddha’s mother. Even professor Kern wrote to me that this woman with her suckling should be nobody else but Mayâ with her son in Lumbini garden. The Indian prince however, remained inexplicable.
The buddhistic king of Siam, Chula Longkorn, gave me in 1896 another and far better explanation which solved all difficulties, and to which I’ll come back again after having first given a superficial description of the gigantic images we see in this temple.
Let us therefore enter through the opened iron railing now replacing the wooden inner door, which for more than some 70 years ago, was used perhaps, as fire-wood.
The space before the unadorned south-easterly back-wall is occupied by a heavy altar-shaped throne not yet long ago newly built in an exceedingly simple style.
And on this throne sits a colossal Buddha image, by no means however, a nude one, so as professor Veth wrongly wrote in his standard work: “Java,” but this is dressed in the cowl of the southern Buddhists uncovering his right shoulder and arm; his two legs dangling and resting on a small cushion with his two hands before his breast in such a posture (mudrâ) as the Mahâyânists, the followers of the “Big Carriage” of the northern church, generally (not always) give to the first of their five Dhyâni-Buddhas. In Ceylon and in Farther India however, there where Hînayânism of the southern church still exists, which doesn’t know any Dhyâni-Buddha, this posture simply means “blessing.”
To the right of this Buddha nearly 4 yards high, we see a buddhistic prince seated on a throne abundantly decorated with nâgas, lions, and elephants, and ornamented with lotus-cushions and feet cushions. The monk’s hood, the bottom of which goes under the princely garb over his left shoulder and breast, and the small Buddha image in his crown characterise him as a Buddhist, and that in contradistinction to the other prince we see opposite him, to the left of the Buddha. And though this prince also has his seat on an equally richly ornamented throne, yet we don’t see any image in his crown, and then he doesn’t wear a monk’s hood, but only the three-stringed upavîta which characterises him as not buddhistic.
On this ground professor Kern thought this Indian prince as inexplicable as the other one we saw in the porch before the entrance.
The two kings wear the prabha, or disk of light, on the back part of their heads. Buddha does not, or no more; for this may have been fixed to the wall of the temple, and afterwards fallen down after that the image itself had slidden from its seat, or before its having been placed there[11].
On account of the posture of his hands before his breast there are some Dutch scholars who suppose this Buddha to be the first Dhyâni-Buddha Vairotyana, and the two other princes they think to be Bodhisattvas or future Buddhas, whilst the one on the north-easterly wall is said to be the fourth Dhyâni-Bodhisatthva, Padmapâni because of his being provided with a small image of the fourth Dhyâni-Buddha, Amitâbha, in his crown.