Which Bodhisatthva we then must see in that other image nobody could tell us, because it misses all attributes.
This however, is also the case with the buddhistic king’s image, and though it may be provided with a Buddha image in its crown, occasionally given to some Bodhisatthvas, yet it doesn’t characterise every wearer as such.
Moreover, I more than once demonstrated that all the crowns are provided with no other image but the one of the Buddha himself in his posture of meditation (or rest after death), and therefore we can’t accept these images to be Bodhisatthvas, or more especially Padmapâni, the Bodhisattva of the fourth Dhyâni-Buddha who, after all, should have been characterised by this Bodhisatthva’s usual attribute, the padma or lotus placed near his face. But these two images also miss this flower and the stem of the lotus which the Bodhisatthvas generally keep in their left hands. Sometimes however, we see them in their right hand, and the flower with the symbol above one or two leaves.
So the meaning of the mentioned scholars doesn’t explain these 3 images whereas Siam’s king, on his visiting this temple in 1896, satisfactorily interpreted the north-westerly image, wearing, like he does himself, a Buddha image in his crown, to be perhaps the king of the buddhistic empire, under whose reign the Båråbudur was built.
Further he supposed the other image to be the latter’s not-buddhistic father and predecessor whilst both father and son (the latter afterwards became a buddhist), might have been honoured by their descendants who brought together the two images in this sanctuary under the blessing of the only Buddha, the redeemer of this world. So this Buddha image has nothing to do with any Dhyâni-Buddha, and by no means with the first of them.
Tyanḍi Mĕndut.
Imagery in front of the entrance of the ruin.
Hâritî, the goddess of the Yakshas, with some of her 500 children.
This explanation of the king-Buddhist became so comprehensible and logical to me that I could not but accept and defend it against others, and so I came to the hypothesis that the ashes of the two kings (but certainly the son’s ashes) must have been buried in this tyanḍi. Their urns may be found back again in a deep pit under the throne of the Buddha, or under the seats of the other images, just as we had found such urns of ashes in other tyanḍis, in square pits, under the pedestals of the images, and generally adorned with some figures of precious metal and provided with some coloured precious stones, the emblems of the seven treasures, the sapta ratna which were given to the dead.
These pits occupied the whole depth of the foundation of these temples, under the floor of the inner-rooms which may have been intentionally built so high above the surface of the earth. This, perhaps, is also the reason of the heavy substructure of tyanḍi Mĕndut.
Had Van de Kamer remained charged with the work of restoration to these ruins the Resident of Ked̆u would then have granted us to examine this affair more closely before the throne was rebuilt again, and the Buddha image replaced upon it.