SECTION OF THE BORO-BOEDOER TEMPLE.
The temple of Boro-Boedoer is built upon a slight rounded eminence, the last of a chain of hills on the eastern bank of the river Prago. The entire edifice rests upon an equilateral base of six hundred and twenty feet, situated due N.S.E. and W., and rises gradually in terraces adapted in design to the form of the hill. These consist of two lower terraces which are square in form; four galleries (or passages, with sculptures on either side), which are still rectangular in form, but have twenty angles to admit of their following the rounded contour of the hill; and four terraces, of which the first has twelve angles, while the remaining three are circular, adorned with cupolas, each containing a statue of Buddha; and finally the whole is surmounted by a huge cupola, fifty feet in diameter, in which rests the central figure of Buddha. Access from one terrace to another is gained by four flights of steps, running up the centre of each front, at the several entrances of which are placed two huge lion-monsters. Dr. Leemans, in his account of the building, enumerates five galleries; but in reality there are only four, since the outside of what he calls the first gallery is merely a second basis for the whole structure, as is shown by the nature of its decoration, viz. simple architectural designs and groups of deities. The lower terrace, of which Dr. Leemans only guessed the existence, is now being excavated and photographed section by section. Only one section is kept open at any given time, because the earth is necessary to support the vast mass of stonework which forms the entire building, and it was for this reason, namely, to prevent the structure from breaking up, that this terrace was formerly banked up. It is found that this lower terrace is decorated with sculptures representing ordinary mundane scenes, the world being the basis on which all the higher religious phenomena rest. In the first gallery (Leemans' second), the bas-reliefs represent a continuous selection of scenes from the historical life of Buddha; in the second, there are sculptures of the lesser deities recognized in the Brahmanic worship, such deities having been adopted into the Buddhistic pantheon; in the third the higher deities are represented, where the shrine, and not the deity, is worshipped; in the fourth there are groups of Buddhas; and in the central dome there is the incomplete statue of the Highest Buddha—Adibuddha. This is unfinished by design, in order to indicate that the highest deity cannot be represented by human hands, having no bodily but only a spiritual existence.
"Om, amitaya! measure not with words
Th' Immeasurable; nor sink the string of thought
Into the Fathomless. Who asks doth err,
Who answers, errs. Say nought."
Such is the design of this great religious monument, of which even the bare ruins, in their melancholy magnificence, inspire the mind of the spectator with mingled feelings of wonder and solemnity.
The temple of Loro-Jonggrang is one in which, as at Kalasan, the object of worship was Siva, and not Buddha. This god, as already stated, was the third of the three persons of the Hindu Trinity; the first being Brahma, or the Creator, and the second Vishnu, the Preserver. Siva, the Destroyer, is also the Reproducer, and appears in Java to have been worshipped under three forms: (1) as Mahadeva, or the Great God; (2) as Mahayogi, or the Great Teacher; and (3) as Mahakala, or the Destroyer. Guru (or Goeroe) is an alternative name for Siva Mahayogi, and his statues in this temple are so called. The edifice is greatly inferior in size to that of Boro-Boedoer; it rests upon a rectangular basement having twelve angles, and measuring some eighty feet across in either direction. Like the former temple, its position is almost exactly square with the points of the compass. The basement is ornamented with ordinary religious ornaments, consisting of sacred trees and lions. Above this is a gallery, of which the parapet on the inner side is decorated with scenes taken from the Ramayana (the second of the two great Indian epics), while the opposite wall of the temple is adorned with forms of deities. In the centre or body of the temple are four chambers, one of which—the principal—is itself larger, and contains a larger image than the others. They are each alike approached by flights of steps in the centre of the four sides of the edifice. The deities represented are—in the northern chamber, Durga; in the western, Ganesa; and in both the southern and eastern, Guru. Now, according to the Brahmanic pantheon, Durga (the Goddess) was the mother, and Guru the father, of Ganesa, the elephant-headed God of Wisdom. The connection between Siva and the Rama epic is this. The Ramayana is the history of the incarnation of Vishnu as Rama, and contains an account of the war waged by Rama with the giant Ravana, the demon king of Ceylon. In the poem mention is made of the Vedic god Indra and his Maruts. Subsequently Siva, the world destroyer, was identified with Indra in the form of Rudra, the god of tempests; hence the appropriateness of scenes from this story on a Saivite temple. It only remains to add that the name of the temple, Loro-Jonggrang, is simply the native name given to the particular Durga (or Goddess of Efficient Virtue) represented in the shrine, and means literally the "Maiden with beautiful hips."
Note.—In view of the late appearance of the Adibuddha (probably the tenth century), I have thought it desirable to state that the theory of the general design of the Boro-Boedoer contained in the text is based upon a very interesting conversation which I had with M. Groeneveldt, who is a member of the Council of Netherlands India and Director of the Museum at Batavia. Professor Rhys Davids has pointed out an interesting distinction between the Boro-Boedoer and the Buddhist shrines in India, viz. that, whereas the cupolas at Boro-Boedoer are hollow, the dagabas of British India are always solid. In the [Annex] will be found a detailed account of the various routes and the cost, etc., of travelling from Batavia to the temple districts in the centre and east of Java.
Footnotes:
[12] "Malay Archipelago."
[13] For this general account of the ruins in the neighbourhood of Djokja I am indebted to the accounts of Raffles and Wallace.