Ruins of Buddhistic Temples in Prågå Valley—Tyandis Båråbudur, Mendut and Pawon — A Closer Reading

d of senses; the decline of a civilisation lost for ever, and of a highly developed art whose products, by time’s tooth changed into ruins, still testify to her lost greatness.

This Mahâyânism only acknowledged Buddha the redeemer of _this_ world, next to him were honoured the Buddhas of _three_ former worlds, and even a _fifth_ Buddha, the redeemer of a future world, which is to exist in the darkness of ages after the crack of this doom. These are the five _Dhyâni-Buddhas_: _Wairotyana_, _Akshobya_, _Ratnasambhava_, _Amitâbha_ and _Amoghasiddha_. And with the exception of these five Buddhas they also honoured the five _Dhyâni-Bodhisattvas_ or Buddha’s sons or Buddhas in a state of being, that is, in a state of self-exercise or self-denial which precedes the Buddhaship. They are in the same order of succession: _Samantabhadra_, _Wadyrapâni_, _Ratnapâni_, _Padmapâni_ and _Wishvapâni_. The southern church doesn’t know these Dhyâni-Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, so their images on the Båråbudur and on other tyanḍis in Java prove to us that the Buddhists of those temples belonged to the _northern_ church.

Proofs of the existence of Hînayânism in Java, there were none as yet. But the Chinese Buddhist _J Tsing_, who visited India and the Dutch Indonésian countries in the seventh century of our era, wrote us that at that period of time Hînayânism must have ruled here in Java[4].

It goes without saying that even the Mahâyânists honoured, among others, the Buddha of _this their_ world, _Amitâbha_, as their Lord and Redeemer, putting faith in his life on earth as man and prince’s son, as ascetic and preacher, just as the Israelites do believe in the personage of their _Jahvé_, their Lord God of Hosts, their god of battle and revenge, and just like our German ancestors trusted in _Odhin_, and _Thor_, and in the dying sun-god _Baldur_.

And when we wish to judge and understand the temples built by these Buddhists, we also ought to start from that point of view, and accept the hero of the legend as if he should have really lived, and suffered in order to redeem the world from the burden of the sin of life, and from the curse of death, and infinite regenerations.

The Buddhists assert the ashes of their Buddha to have been divided after his cremation into eight towns, and buried there. King _Ashoka_ is said to have seven of these graves re-opened again so as to distribute the holy ashes among some 84000 metal, crystal or stone vases or urns to cause them to be spread throughout his empire and without, and kept under barrows or _stûpas_.

We know the proper history of Buddhism to begin with this king in the _third_ century _before_ our era, and in several parts of Hindustan are found still undamaged inscriptions chiselled at his order upon rocks as so many unobjectionable evidences of this fact. I willingly allow this number of 84000 to be very exaggerated—yet, it is a fact proved by many an existing and opened grave, that the Buddhists of that or later date, and wherever they might have settled, always kept small quantities of ashes or bones they considered the remains of their Buddha’s corpse, in order to be buried under earthen or stone barrows to honour them as the relics of the great Master himself.[5]

There where the Buddhists founded a community, there, under such a hill or _stûpa_ they also buried an urn of ashes whereas the hill itself was honoured as the Master’s grave.[6]

Those hills however, were badly protected from the influences of temperature and time, and not proof against the profaning hand of man, and therefore built of stone, the _dâgaba_ or _dagob_, generally placed on a pedestal of composed leaves of the lotus, the _padmâsana_, hardly dispensible to Indian images.[7]

Many temples’ ornaments have been copied after these dagobs, among others, the shape of the small-sized prayer-bell which is still rung by the _visju_ in chinese temples even at this day. These are facts proving this tomb-stone’s having been highly honoured.

Not anything do we know about the Buddhists of eleven centuries ago who once populated these regions where afterwards arose the Mohammedan empire of _Mataram_. We only know that there formerly must have existed a _Hindu_ empire of this name because of a found copper engraving all covered with ancient-javanese writing which contained in a oath-formula the words: “_Sri mahârâja i Mataram_.”

We understand them to have come from India, probably from the North, but we don’t know when this happened, and when they first began to deposit their Buddha ashes worthily.