Dr. Brandes, observing that the chandi Boro Budoor must have been meant because there is no other place known of the same name and its strategical value, given ancient modes of warfare, is obvious, puts the date of its investment by Pangeran Pringgalaya to seize Ki Mas Dana, at 1709 or 1710. A native reference to the Boro Budoor of half a century later, is found in a Javanese manuscript, used by Professor C. Poensen for a paper on Mangku Bumi, first Sooltan of Jogjakarta.[167] The conduct of the Pangeran Adipati, son of that Sooltan, grieved his father very much. Besides his ignorance in literary matters, he was proud and arrogant; he disdained his father’s advice and associated with the women of the toll-gate, which caused all sorts of annoyance. He went also to the Boro Budoor to see the thousand statues, notwithstanding an old prediction that misfortune would befall the prince who beheld those images, for one of them represented a satrya (a noble knight) imprisoned in a cage; but it was the Prince’s fate that he wished to see the statue of the satrya. Having gratified his desire, he remained in the Kadu, where he led a most dissolute life. This gave great sorrow to his father, the Sooltan, because the scandal reached such dimensions that the (Dutch) Governor at Samarang heard of it and reprimanded him. Ashamed and angry, he sent a few bupatis with armed men to order the Pangeran Adipati to return to Ngajogja (Jogjakarta); if he refused, they had to use violence and were even authorised to kill him. The Pangeran Adipati obeyed and was kindly received by his father, but soon after he fell ill, spat blood and died. A letter of the Governor-General J. Mossel, dated December 30, 1758,[168] contains the passage: “His Highness’ eldest son, the pangerang Adipatty Hamancoenagara, having departed this life, ...” and the profligate Crown Prince’s visit to the Boro Budoor may therefore be put at a few years less than fifty after Ki Mas Dana’s rebellion.
It is clear, says Dr. Brandes, that at the time referred to in this second record, the Boro Budoor was something more to the natives than simply a hill; they knew of the building with the thousand statues—a round number like that of the chandi Sewu, the “thousand temples”—and they knew of the images in the bell-shaped chaityas on the circular terraces. And though any one of those 72 statues or even the principal statue in the central dagob may have been meant, in which last case, however, another expression than kuroongan (cage) would appear more appropriate, we think involuntarily of the Sang Bimo or Kaki Bimo so-called, a statue of the Buddha promoted or degraded by popular superstition to the rank of a Pandawa, Arjuno’s chivalrous brother, seated in the chaitya of the lowest circular terrace, next to and south of the eastern staircase, still venerated by the natives, by the Chinese community and by more women and men of European extraction than are willing to confess it. Bimo or Wergodoro, to use the name given to him in the wayang lakons when they extol his youthful exploits, is the archetype of the satrya, the pattern of ancestral knighthood. Most probably it was Sang Bimo who, conformably to the ilaila or ancient prediction, executed the decree of fate on Pangeran Adipati Hamangkunagara. Disregarding the example set by the invisible power which resides in the Boro Budoor, a later Crown Prince of Jogjakarta visited that temple in 1900 without, so far, coming to grief. Has then the ilaila under special consideration lost its efficacy? We must presume so, notwithstanding that the occult forces identified with Sang Bimo and other statues of the ancient fane, are affirmed still to work miracles in plenty when propitiated by adequate sacrifice.
XXXVIII. ASCENDING TO THE DAGOB OF THE BORO BUDOOR
(Cephas Sr.)
The greatest miracle of all is the elation of man’s thought by the irresistible charm which goes out from it. A night with the Boro Budoor is a night of purification, when Amitabha offers the lotus of the good law and the gift is accepted; when the wonderful edifice, rising to the star-spangled sky, unfolds terrace after terrace and gallery after gallery between the domed and pinnacled walls, as his flower of ecstatic meditation spreads its petals, opens its heart of beauty to the fructifying touch of heaven; when tranquil love descends in waves of contentment, unspeakable satisfaction. The dagob loses its sharp, bold outline and melts into boundless space, a vision of fading existence in consummation of wisdom. A mysterious voice, proceeding from the shrine, urges to search out the secret it hides. The summons cannot be resisted and going up, trusting to the murky night, mounting the steps to the first gate as in a somnambulistic trance, the seeker of enlightenment discerns the path, guided by his quickened perception when the voice dies of its own sweetness, the fragrant stillness appeasing the mind and extending promise of pity for passion and fleshly desire, the garment of sin left behind. Surely, it was the supreme wisdom, forgiving all things because it understands, which inspired a human intellect to devise, directed human hands to achieve in the delineation of mercy such powerful architectural unity, sustained by such sublimely beauteous ornament. Aided from above, the spirituality of the builder, creating this masterpiece, needed not the laborious tricks passed off on us in our days of feverish effect-hascherei by artists who dispense with the rudiments of their art to strive after the sensational. Neither was his originality of the cheap kind which tries to cloak crass technical ignorance and hopeless general ineptitude with paltry though pretentious artifices, displaying a deplorable lack of the conceptive faculty into the bargain. Proclaiming the doctrine glorious in veracity of thought and utterance, the Boro Budoor typifies honest endeavour and sincerity of purpose.
Entering the first of the porches through which from four sides the successive galleries and terraces are reached, we come under the spell of the rapture symbolised by those vaulted staircases, leading upward from reason to faith, constructed, it seems, to match the “evident portals” of the perfect state: composure, kindness, modesty, self-knowledge. The Banaspati, terrifier of the evil spirits, shelters him who proceeds on the path they indicate in clemency and charity. As we pass on, confiding in his protection, the sculptured walls gleam softly, impregnated by the sun’s light embedded in the stones, and the germ of truth, treasured in the dagob, radiates down in luminous substantiation of the word, making the invisible visible by degrees. The air hangs heavy and warm in the galleries and throbs with the emotion excited by the lustrous reliefs which picture the life of the Buddha. A flush of indescribable splendour, clear exhalation of his virtue and holiness, lifts veil after veil from the bliss this initiation portends. The transparent atmosphere lends new significance to the gestures of the Dhyani Buddhas, seated on their lotus cushions as stars half quenched in golden mist, while we feel more than see the serene calmness of their features still wrapped in obscurity. Their contemplation is the beginning of the highest; their ecstasy pierces eternity, opens the regions of infinite intelligence, complete self-effacement, absolute nothingness. Too much absorbed in abstract cogitation to occupy themselves with matters of mundane interest, they leave the government of the created worlds to their spiritual sons, and Padmapani is the Mahasatva on whom our age depends. Out-topping human knowledge, they teach the meaning of the universe: the Buddha of the East dreaming his dreams as the sun rises, the Buddha of the South blessing the day, the Buddha of the West unfolding the secret of the all-spirit as the sun sets, the Buddha of the North pointing the way from darkness to light, the Buddha of the Zenith lifting his hands to turn the wheel of the law. The statues smile beatitude in happiness at losing the consciousness of existence when they will be worthy of the Nirvana, the solution of life in non-being, death which disclaims resurrection in any form. And the highest attainable blessing, the Paranirvana, the Nirvana Absolute, is signified in the image of the central dagob: however interpreted as solitary indweller of the shrine of shrines built over the remains of the flesh which embodied the word, the Tathagata, the self-subsisting, preceded and to be succeeded in fullness of time, it figures the immanence in bodily imperfection of the energy for good which sanctified Ayushmat Gautama, who modified his carnality by dominating his senses; who, when questioned by his first disciples, could declare that he was the expected teacher of lucid perception and replete comprehension, the discerning monitor, the destroyer of error, the spotless counsellor impelled to release them from the bonds of sin and make them deserve the manifest favour of annihilation.
The rudely interrupted sleep of the recho bèlèt formulated, intentionally or not, a confession of faith in the reward of righteousness by complete dissolution, cessation of continuance, eternal rest undisturbed by gods or men, by feeling or thought. The pilgrim to the Boro Budoor, longing for the arahatship, accomplished in the science of conducting himself, must have hesitated before ascending to the highest terrace and seeking direct communion with the pure spirit of the son of virtue, born of a woman truly, but whose mother died seven days after his birth, in token of his eminence; the venerable one whose moral strength stands paramount, overcometh even the innate fear of extinction. The essence of the Triratna lies here within the grasp of the earnest inquirer, the precious pearl whose lustre divulges the principle of causation, the beginning and the end of all things, the primary source of what is and shall be. How to obtain it? By offerings to the symbolic stone? Not so, but by good works and self-examination which excels prayer and makes any place a Bodhimanda, a seat of intelligence. The Buddha was a man, no god surpassing the limits of humanity, who has to be propitiated by adoration. Whoso wishes the Rescuer’s saving grace, should remember the story of Upagoopta and the courtesan Vasavadatta, and ask: Has my hour arrived?[169] Penance for errors committed, not by fasting and self-torture, but by persevering in the eight-fold path of right views, right aspirations, right speech, right behaviour, right search of sustenance, right effort, right mindfulness of our fellow-creatures, right exultation, should ward off the dire punishment of remorse which in well-balanced spirits cannot dwell. Self-restraint, uprightness, control of the organs of sense, makes the fell fire of the three deadly sins—sensuality, ill-will and moral sluggishness—die out in the heart by a proper arrangement of the precious vestments, the six cardinal virtues: charity, cleanness, patience, courage, contemplative sympathy with all creation and discrimination of good and evil. This leads to perfection, advancement to the highest of the four sublime conditions, the Brahma Viharas on which Buddhism improved by making equanimity with regard to one’s own joys and sorrows the test of progress on the road which leads to bliss in extermination of pain. Loosen the shackles of worldly existence by constant application to escape from the fatal thraldom imposed by birth and rebirth! Life is continued misery; no salvation from the distress caused by passion and sin is possible except by cessation of self, by merging individual in universal vacancy, mounting the four steps of the Dhyana in contemplative evolution of the Nirvana, refining perception and speculation to total impassibility, extinguishing reason itself in eternal voidness, where we have nothing to fear and nothing to hope for, taking refuge in non-existence, the only conceivable verity.
XXXIX. THE DAGOB OF THE BORO BUDOOR BEFORE ITS RESTORATION
(C. Nieuwenhuis.)