369. View of the Maha Vihara, Anuradhapura. (From Sir E. Tennent’s ‘Ceylon.’)
In India, at the present day, there is nothing so common as to see in the villages of Bengal little three-storeyed pyramids of mud—exact models of these Javan temples—on the top of which is planted the Tulsi shrub, the sacred plant of the Vaishnavas (Ocymum sanctum, or Sweet Basil), which succeeded the Ficus religiosa in the affections of the Hindus. Frequently, however, this emblem is planted in vases, or little models of ordinary temples, the top of which is hollowed out for the purpose. Numbers of these exist also in Java; but no one—at least in recent times—having visited the island who was familiar with the ordinary domestic religion of the Hindus, the Dutch antiquarians have mistaken every model of a dagoba—of which thousands exist in India—and described it as a lingam, and every Tulsi vase as a Yoni. In most cases they are neither the one nor the other. Even this mistake, however, is instructive, as it shows how much of their emblems, at least, these religions interchanged in the ages of toleration. They are distinct enough now, but before A.D. 750 it is difficult to draw a line anywhere.
At Panataram there is another temple, which, if any one in the island is entitled to be called a Serpent temple, certainly merits that appellation. The Batavian Society have devoted twenty-two photographs to the illustration of its sculptures, but have given no plan and not one syllable of description. There is not even a general view from which its outline might be gathered, and no figure is introduced from which a scale might be guessed. Its date appears to be A.D. 1416. The figures, however, from which this is inferred are not on the temple itself but on a bath or tank attached to it, though, from the character of its sculptures, it is almost certainly coeval.
The reason why it is called a Serpent temple is, that the whole of the basement-moulding is made up of eight great serpents, two on each face, whose upraised heads in the centre form the side pieces of the steps that lead up to the central building, whatever that was. These serpents are not, however, our familiar seven-headed Nagas that we meet with everywhere in India and Cambodia, but more like the fierce crested serpents of Central America. The seven-headed serpent does occur very frequently among the sculptures at Boro Buddor—never independently, however, nor as an object to be worshipped, but as adorning the heads of a Naga people who come to worship Buddha or to take a part in the various scenes represented there. Even then they are very unlike the Indian Naga, whose hood is unmistakably that of an expanded cobra. Those at Boro Buddor and Panataram are crested snakes, like that represented in the Japanese woodcut in ‘Tree and Serpent Worship,’ page 56.
The sculptures on these monuments are not of a religious or mythological character, but either historical or domestic. What they represent may easily be ascertained, for above each scene is a short descriptive inscription, quite perfect, and in a character so modern that I fancy any scholar on the spot might easily read them. It, probably, has been done, but our good friends the Dutch are never in a hurry, and we must, consequently, wait.
Meanwhile it is curious to observe that we know of only two monuments in our whole history which are so treated, and these the earliest and the last of the great school:[626] that at Bharhut, so often alluded to above, erected two centuries before Christ; and this one, erected in the 15th century, while the struggle with the Mahomedan religion was gathering around it that strength, which, within half a century from that time, finally extinguished the faith to which it belonged.
There is one other temple of this class at a place called Matjanpontih, regarding which some more information would be interesting. It is described by Heer Brumund as partly of brick, partly of stone, but singularly rich in ornamentation. “The sub-basement,” he says, “is composed of a tortoise and two serpents; the heads of these three animals unite on the west face and form the entrance.”[627]
This and many others of the description are nearly unintelligible without illustrations, but many of them seem to point to a class of Serpent temples, which, if better known, might throw considerable light on the mystery that still shrouds that form of faith in India.
Djeing Plateau.