XXXIV. A DHYANI BUDDHA OF THE BORO BUDOOR
(Cephas Sr.)
Winding our way upward, passing through the galleries whose profound silence, imbued with the intensely religious spirit radiating from their sculptured walls, becomes more and more eloquent; circling the terraces where the attitude of ecstatic elation of the world’s pre-eminently venerable ones in their chaityas exalts the mind in tremulous expectation, we arrive at the dagob, the shrine of shrines, the temple’s coronet, glittering in the bright glow of day. This is the reliquary proper, the centre into which the holiness of the hallowed building converges. It rises, similar to the smaller cupolas, but perpendicular to a height of several feet, from a substructure in the guise of a lotus cushion; it was also closed round about, without any aperture so far as can be concluded from its present state, for a portion of it has tumbled down and the base of the crowning pinnacle, reached by ill-matched, rickety steps, a recent, outrageously discordant addition, serves for a bench, the whole, about 25 feet above the topmost terrace, having been transformed into a crude belvedere, enabling visitors to enjoy the magnificent view. The interior space seems originally to have been divided into an upper and a lower chamber; there is nothing deserving mention in the matter of decoration save an inscription to remind posterity of the late King of Siam’s visit in the disastrous year 1896—a delicious memorial, at the same time, of official vandalism and servility. The golden letters affect one unpleasantly in the spoliated sanctum, whose ruinous condition dates from a previous call, some sixty or seventy years ago, permitted if not encouraged by previous authorities, when looting pseudo-archaeologists broke into it and carried off the relic, which consisted, assuming the credibility of local reports regarding their disappointment, in a small quantity of ashy substance, enclosed in a metal urn with lid; furthermore in a small image of metal and a few coins. The large statue they unearthed too, would have impeded the movements of the marauders on their return voyage and so it remained in place, half hidden in the hole they had dug, undisturbed, for the same reason, by subsequent collectors. Left unfinished by its sculptor, designedly or not,[156] resembling in the position of its hands the Dhyani Buddhas which face the East, does it personify the Adi-Buddha, a purely abstract entity, a metaphysical conception hitherto defying even symbolic utterance? The learned and especially the quasi-learned never lacked weighty arguments pro or contra, and, without prejudice to all they proved and disproved,[157] it does not appear improbable that the lively imagination of the Javanese artist aimed at a tangible expression of him who ran his course as the spirit and source of the Buddhist conception of happiness, resuscitated from his ashes, dominating East and West, North and South, the blissful abode of those progressing in self-negation and the infernal regions of prolonged earthly existence, by the strength of the divine rays proceeding from the oorna, illumining the path trodden by the virtuous toward annihilation, terrifying the children of darkness, dwellers in passion and sin, pervading all creation with his saintliness, the one of the Paranirvana whose essence flowers in the beauty of the Boro Budoor. And the Moslim native worships him as the god of his ancestors, caught in stone; smears him with boreh and performs acts of sacrifice before him in spite of the Book fulminating against idolaters and of the almost contemptuous familiarity intimated by the otherwise very appropriate nickname bestowed on this heterodox deity, namely recho belèq, which means “statue in the mud”.
XXXV. RELIEFS OF THE BORO BUDOOR
(C. Nieuwenhuis.)
The work of restoration, started with excavations and the removal of heaps of accumulated debris, has led to important discoveries, also in relation to the dagob. Among shattered naga-gargoyles, antefixes, carved detail of every description, fragments have been found of a triple payoong, an ornament in the form of a sunshade which capped it; of a statuette supposed to have adorned its second storey, the upper compartment of the cella. To quote from Major van Erp’s last published report,[158] the excavations shed new light on the design of some minor parts of the building, the decoration, e.g., of the lowest three staircases on each of the four sides; notwithstanding the existing drawings, the kala-makara motive seems to have entered into the ornament of the entrance gate in the principal outer wall; the design of the balustrade which enclosed the platform of the temple and disappeared altogether, has been determined and a portion of it will be rebuilt to show how things must have looked; slabs belonging to the different series of bas-reliefs, mostly of the jataka variety, have been unearthed or detected in neighbouring kampongs. Especial care is taken to retrieve those missing from the upper tier in the first gallery: if the recovered reliefs are not always complete, the recognisable principal figure explains generally the idea which the sculptor intended to convey, with sufficient clearness to be grasped by the trained archaeologist. And as to the rest of the detached pieces of architectural value, dug up or otherwise revealed to the searching eye, the symmetric unity of the Boro Budoor is such that place and position of each component part, however subordinate in the mighty fabric, are easily ascertained. Every new find discloses new excellence, so far undreamt of, in the constructive ability of the master-builder whose illuminated brain conceived the idea of this temple wherein he wrote the history of a religion,
Whose goodly workmanship far past all other,
That ever were on earth, all were they set together.
XXXVI. ASCENDING THE BORO BUDOOR
(Cephas Sr.)
His name is unknown, though native fancy, descrying his likeness in the profile of the Minoreh mountains, a fine conceit worthy of his genius, has baptised him Kiahi Guna Darma. Another tradition calls him Kiahi Oondagi and makes him chisel the statue which, up to the time of the late King of Siam’s visit in 1896, stood near the pasangrahan, facing a damaged Amitabha and seemingly heartening the diminishing ranks of the lions mounting guard. It had been brought thither from a place known as Topog, about a mile distant, and was certainly a portrait-statue, beautifully cut and with its extraordinarily clever features a rare work of art. The story goes that, like Busketus, the architect (with Rainaldus) of the Duomo at Pisa, his dearest wish was to have his remains carried to rest under the stones of the edifice he had raised to the honour of the unseen; that, baffled in his hopes and reincarnated after his death because of some venial offence which made him fail in attaining the Nirvana too, he fashioned this effigy to be set up at the entrance of his magnum opus, anticipating an idea of the equally nameless artist who put the Byzantine stamp on San Marco in Venice. It is an additional proof of the late King Chulalongkorn’s discrimination in favour of the very best that, making the permitted choice, his Majesty included Kiahi Oondagi, but O! the official cringing and the little piety shown to the memory of the illustrious labourer who wrought this wonderful monument.