To define the Buddhism which, parallel and entwined with Hinduïsm, preceded the Muhammadanism of Java, is no easy matter, if it is possible at all. For the sake of convenience Javanese Buddhism may be classified as mahayanistic, conformable to the northern canon or doctrine of the Greater Vehicle, versus hinayanistic, i.e. conformable to the southern canon or the doctrine of the Lesser Vehicle. But the geographical division proposed by Burnouf, hardly meets the case of our more advanced knowledge, which points rather to chronological distinctions. Javanese Buddhism of the younger growth was strongly impregnated with modified Brahmanic conceits,[110] in fact a compromise between the hopeful expectation of the Metteya Buddha, the Messiah promised by Bhagavat, and resignation to the decrees of the Jagad Guru whom the Saivas of Hindu Java had chosen for their ishta-devata, the fittest form in which to adore the Ruler of the Universe, Param Esvara. Siva lost under Buddhist influences his terrorising aspect as Kala, and the two creeds, giving and taking, lived in perfect concord. The statues of the Dhyani Buddhas partook of Siva’s attributes; those of their sons, the Bodhisatvas, the Buddhas in evolution, and of their saktis, showed the characteristics of other Hindu gods and goddesses; Siva, conversely, assumed the features of Avalokitesvara or Padmapani, the Buddhist lord of the world that is now. I have already spoken of the enthroned Bodhisatvas represented at the Sivaïte temples of Prambanan and the more or less Sivaïte exterior of the Buddhist chandi Mendoot. Also of this remarkable syncretism, born from inbred tolerance, leading to new transactions with the Islām, exacting as it may be everywhere else; of the deference still shown to deities of the Hindu pantheon in the shape of jinn; of the adjustment of Muhammadan institutions to usages of Hindu origin; etc. And Buddhism, doubtless, prepared the mystically inclined mind of the Javanese Moslim for the acceptance of the mild Sufism of the school of Gazali, which guides him in submission of will to ma’ripat, full knowledge, and hakakat, most hidden truth, while he lacks the conviction, to quote Professor L. W. C. van den Berg, that his neglect of the prescribed daily prayers will make him lose his status as a true believer.
XIX. CHANDI KALASAN
(C. Nieuwenhuis.)
Central Java is richer yet in the quality than in the quantity of its Buddhist monuments, whose builders and decorators, like the true artists they were, told what they knew and believed, nothing but that, and therefore told it so well.[111] To examine their work, beautiful even in decay, beginning with the smaller structures, we wend our way again to the plain of Prambanan. Travelling from Jogjakarta to Surakarta by rail, the first stopping-place, reached in about twenty minutes, is Kalasan, the chandi of that name, otherwise called Kali Bening, being visible from the train. Once it must have been one of the finest and most elaborately wrought in the island; now only the south front, nearly tumbling down, witnesses to its former splendour. It was built in 700 Saka (A.D. 778), a date preserved in a Nagari inscription which settles that point,[112] and names a Shailandra prince as its founder in honour of his guru (teacher), doing homage to Tara[113] who, seeing the destruction of men in the sea of life, which is full of incalculable misery, saves them by three means ...; it speaks of a grant of land to the monks of a neighbouring monastery, contains several particulars of practical value with an admonition to keep a bridge or dam in repair, etc. The building, in the form of a Greek cross, had four apartments, reached by a terrace and four staircases, the stones of which have been carried away long ago. The four gates, judging by the little left on one of them, were profusely decorated with the kala-makara motive dominating the ornament. The roof bore images of Dhyani Buddhas in 44 niches and was crowned with 16 dagobs so called, the principal one rising probably to a great height. Time and rapine have reduced this magnificent realisation of a glorious conception, this masterpiece of measured luxury, as Rouffaer styles it justly, to a melancholy heap of debris. The statuary which adorned the exterior is gone, save three images in their niches, examples of the gorgeous but never too florid ornamentation; the interior pictures desolation, ruin within ruin! A disfigured elephant, driven by a horned monster, its mahout, protrudes from the wall above the throne it protects, but the cushioned seat is empty. The statue taken from it was presumably a representation of the beatific Tara glorified in the inscription, the noble and venerable one, whose smile made the sun to shine and whose frown made darkness to envelop the terrestrial sphere. It has been surmised that the mysterious female deity in the residency grounds at Jogjakarta originally filled the throne of Kalasan, but the vanished Tara left her cushion behind and the unknown goddess, whose lovely body rivals the lotus-flower in august sweetness, holds firmly to her padmasana in addition to her attributes defying identification as the mother of the Buddha who is to be.
The short distance between the chandi Kalasan or Kali Bening and the chandi Sari must have been often traversed by the seekers of the noble eight-fold path, inquirers into the four truths and examiners of the three signs, mortifiers of their flesh in the practice of the ten repugnances. Bikshus, living on the alms they collected without asking by word or gesture, without unduly attracting attention, passing in silence those inclined and those not inclined to charity, avoiding the houses and people dangerous to virtue, never tarrying anywhere and never presenting themselves more than three times at the doors of the uncharitable, eating the food received in solitude before noon, the only meal allowed to them, they must have awakened a good deal of pity in their tattered robes, but one suspects that the mendicant brethren of Java, notwithstanding their individual vows of poverty, were exceedingly wealthy as a community after the wont of their kind everywhere and of whatever religious denomination. Their viharas or monasteries, to judge from the ruins, were well appointed and the inmates apparently well provided for by princes who took a pride or found their interest in befriending religion and the religious. If strictly adhering to their monastic rules, the Buddhist monks had to live in the open, but the wet monsoon is not a pleasant season in the woods without adequate protection against storm and rain, and avec le ciel il y a des accommodements, a motto acted upon long before le Sieur Poquelin formulated it. The chandi Sari is supposed to have been the main structure of the residential quarter destined for the accommodation of the clergy connected with the chandi Kalasan, the abode of the monks who knew the greater vehicle of discipline as the inscription has it, the monastery built by command of the Shailendra king for their venerable congregation and recommended to his successors in order that all who followed their teachings might understand the cause and effect of the positive condition of things and attain prosperity. The rectangular building had a lower and an upper storey, both divided into three rooms, lighted by windows; the absent roof had niches for statuary, capped with diminutive domes in the manner of dagobs. In the decoration extensive use has been made of the elephant and the makara, the fabulous fish with an elephant’s head; images of saints with and without aureoles, of celestial beings more suggestive of the Hindu pantheon than of Buddhist atheism,[114] of the bird-people and divers animals, enliven the rich, flowery ornament of the well proportioned facings, cornices and window-frames. Rising gracefully from its solid yet elegant base, the edifice creates an impression of airiness and stability cleverly combined, the dark gray colour of the weatherbeaten andesite blending harmoniously with the tender green of the bambu-stools which transport our thoughts to the garden of Kalandra where the Buddha, preaching the lotus of the good law, made converts foreordained to rank among his most famous disciples: Sariputra, Maudgalyayana, Katyayana.... And the officially licensed sinners against the ancient monuments of Java, hardened, habitual criminals in that respect, expressly appointed to do their worst at the Paris Exhibition of 1900, pretended their horrid botch in the Park of the Trocadéro to be a reproduction d’une pureté irréprochable of this rare gem of architectural workmanship, the chandi Sari!
XX. CHANDI SARI
(C. Nieuwenhuis.)
As in India, pious foundations for the benefit of those under bond to serve religion, disregarding worldly considerations, must have been numerous in Java, especially in the plain of Prambanan, once studded with viharas like Asoka’s kingdom, the “Behar” of to-day. Passing over the monastic claims advanced for some ruins in the southern mountains, those of Plahosan cannot be ignored. There we find the remains of two buildings, formerly enclosed by a wall, portions of which are recognisable, and surrounded by smaller structures arranged in three rows, the inner ones reminding of the style conspicuous in the chandi Sewu, about a mile to the west-southwest. Close together, but originally perhaps divided by a second wall, they are situated due north and south from each other with their entrances to the west; the roofs have succumbed; of the two storeys only the lower ones, containing sufficient space for three rooms, are tolerably preserved. Of a composite nature, the chandi Plahosan was presumably rather a sangharama than a vihara and the doorkeeper at the gate, when all those scattered stones and the smashed, stolen or otherwise removed statues were still in place, may have welcomed the wayfarer, seeking shelter on a tempestuous night, with such difficult questions as barred access to the hospitality of Silabhadra, the superior of Nalanda, and his flock. Hiuen Tsiang, the Chinese pilgrim, who could answer them all and a good many more, has left us a description of the sangharama, the six consolidated viharas of Nalanda with their towers, domes and pavilions, embellished by the piety of the kings of the five Indies; their gardens, splashing fountains and shady groves, where he spent several years learning Sanskrit and the wisdom of the holy books, never thinking the days too long; their life of ease, scarcely conducive to the austere observance of pristine discipline by the ten thousand brethren under vows and novices who crowded thither to seek purification and deliverance from sin in study and meditation,—a description which, for want of any better, our fancy takes leave to apply to Plahosan. Though separated by months of travel from Bodhimanda, where Sakyamuni entered the state of the perfect Buddha and the proximity of which gave Nalanda its holy character, the zeal of its scholars and saints, no less tolerant than Hiuen Tsiang’s temporary co-students, who sifted with laudable impartiality the truth from the Vedas, from the doctrines of the two vehicles and from the heresies of the eighteen schismatics, undoubtedly stimulated religious life in the best sense of the word, religion disposing the mind to kindliness and goodwill, as it should, strengthening social ties, fostering science and art.
The walls of the chandi Plahosan, in so far as preserved, are beautifully decorated with sculpture in bas-relief. The delicate tracery of the basement is divided by slender pilasters and the frieze beneath the symmetric cornice is richly festooned, parrots nestling in the foliage among the flowers. Bodhisatvas, standing between, formed the principal ornament of panels bordered by garlands with pendent prayer-bells; the remaining ones grasp lotus-stems springing up to their left; gandharvas (celestial singers) float over the garuda-heads of the portals. The reliefs represent scenes familiar to the observer of native life: here a couple of men seated under a bo-tree or waringin and saluting a person of rank, raising their folded hands to perform the sembah; there a mās[115] with his attendants, one of whom holds the payoong (sunshade) over his head while another carries a senteh[116] leaf. Four stone figures guard the approaches to the viharas, armed with cudgel and sword; in one hand they hold the snake which, after the manner of their kind, should be worn over one shoulder and across the breast, replacing the upawita. The statuary which adorned the inner rooms, was of large dimensions, finely chiselled and garnished with profuse detail, concluding from what we know of it. Part has been removed to the “museum” at Jogja, part has been broken to pieces by treasure-hunters who dug holes and sunk shafts, disturbing the foundations of the chandi Plahosan in their ignorance of the difference between Buddhist monasteries and Hindu mausolea built round funeral pits; the sorely damaged images of holiness which were suffered to keep their stations by frankly destructive and even more pernicious official or semi-official soi-disant “preservation and conservation,” are truly pitiful to behold. It seems, indeed, as if the monuments specially recommended to official care, are singled out for the most irreparable injury. On a par with the wild feast of plaster, cement and whitewash at Panataran was the wonderful planning of a restoration of the chandi Plahosan after faulty drawings and the simultaneous disappearance of the staircase and a portion of the substructure of the northern vihara.
Less than a mile to the south of the stopping-place Prambanan on the railroad from Jogja to Solo, are the ruins of a group of chandis which may or may not have borne a monastic character,[117] Sajiwan and Kalongan being the names connected with it. One of the structures was cleared in 1893 by the Archaeological Society of Jogjakarta and to its statuary applies what has been said of the atrocities perpetrated at Plahosan: besides downright spoliation the same errors of omission and commission. From Prambanan proper, i.e. from the Loro Jonggrang group, it is a short walk to the chandi Sewu, which means the “thousand temples”. They are situated in Surakarta, the boundary between the Susuhunan’s and the Sooltan’s domains, indicated by two white pillars, running just behind the smaller structures which face the shrines of Brahma and Vishnu flanking that of Siva. But, though the walk is short, it may be a trifle too sunny for comfort even if it be morning and the roads lively with the women returning from market, the surroundings of the houses of prayer and death gladdening the eye, presenting a spectacle full of colour and light, the matrons treading their way statelily and steadily, the maidens, decorous and modest, gliding behind their elders like the devis, the shining ones descended from the Ramayana reliefs, to exhibit their exquisite forms, bashful however conscious of their worth in that golden, sweet-scented atmosphere. They have no business at the chandi Sewu and on the unfrequented by-path thither we proceed alone, save for a few children with no more to cover their nakedness than the loveliest innocence—a garment quite different from the western cache-misère of mawkish prudery—, curious to find out what the strangers are about. Under their escort we reach the chandi Loomboong (padi-shed), thus called from the size and form of the ruins which compose it. They are sixteen in number, arranged in a square round the principal structure, its once octagonal roof, shaped like a dagob, attesting to its Buddhist character, though it is not unmixed with Sivaïte elements as the funeral pits plainly indicate. They were already empty when examined some years ago and the fine statues tradition speaks of, can nowhere be found. The little ornament left in place and one single fragment of a bas-relief give a high idea of the decoration when the beauty of these temples had not yet faded away, exactly as in the case of the chandi Bubrah,[118] another shrine on the via sacra which connects the Loro Jonggrang and Sewu groups. To quote Major van Erp again: The state of affairs here is very sad; of the chandis Ngaglik, Watu Gudik and Geblak, which the memory of the oldest inhabitants puts somewhat farther north, even the site cannot now be located.