Part 1

Ruins of Buddhistic Temples IN Prågå-Valley.

Tyanḍis Båråbudur, Mĕndut and Pawon

BY

Dr. I. GRONEMAN,

translated from the dutch by J. H.

Druk van H. A. BENJAMINS, Semarang, 1912.

Preface.

When in 1896 I was obliged to retire from practice, on account of sickness, I shortly after took up my residence at Jogyåkartå again in order to devote myself to the antiquarian and ethnological studies dear to me, and to which purpose I had to establish myself in the neighbourhood of the principal Hindu ruins in Java, that is, in the plain of _Parambanan_, and in the valley of _Prågå_ whereas I could not rely on being assisted by the Dutch Government or whomsoever; I had grown _too old_ under a system of Government who even refuse a professor septuagenarian to follow his profession.

As for the Indian antiquities however, there are still many things to be learned, not only because many a sculpture and symbolical ornament of building has not yet been explained or, so to say, insufficiently interpreted, but also because some of these images have been wrongly understood and expounded. I therefore thought it my duty to have my knowledge of them increased by a continued study of the antiquities themselves, and by consulting such writings as I could dispose of with my limited means.

I also would comply with other people’s wishes by giving a simple description of the most interesting ruin in the village of _Mĕndut_ situated by the way-side to the _Båråbudur_, and mention the small _tyanḍi Pawon_ lying in its neighbourhood.

And so I gathered all data for an up-to-date _fifth_ edition in behalf of the continually increasing number of visitors who come to visit these incomparable temples, which, in spite of expensive but insufficient restoration, seem doomed to decay.

_G._ _Jogyårkartå 1906._

Having succeeded at last in finding a person from whose hand both the editor and myself express a wish to see a good English translation of this little book, I consequently completed and rewrote the former text (1906-1907.).

CONTENTS.

Page. Preface 3 Buddhistic temples in Prågå-valley 5 Tyanḍi Mĕndut 13 Tyanḍi Pawon 23 Tyanḍi Båråbudur 26 Concluding word 90 Errata 92

Ruins of Buddhistic temples in Prågå-valley.

I.

The Buddhists believe their community, their worship, their church, or whatever one may be inclined to call this, to have been founded 24 centuries ago by the wise and humane king’s son of _Kapilavastu_, called Gautama, the _Shâkja muni_ or wise _Shâkja_, _Buddha_ or the _Enlightened_. All that which the later legends related either of Buddha himself or of his _former lives_, they consider historically true.

Competent Orientalists, among whom the Dutch ex-professor Dr. H. Kern, stated however that, much about those legends that _cannot_ be true from a historical point of view, will become quite comprehensible and possible as soon as taken in a mythical sense, and when we understand the hero of the myth to be a sun-god. And then it will be perfectly indifferent to us, non-Buddhists, whether those legends may or may not have historical foundations and whether the _Buddha_ of the Buddhists may have really lived and existed or not.

Still it is an indisputed matter of fact, that the Buddhist religion must have existed as such for about three centuries before the beginning of our era, and professed by king Ashoka _the great_. Inscriptions partly saved, and found upon columns, and on the walls of rocks, prove all this to be just[1].

This Buddhism taught that mankind might be freed from any sensual passion, and sin by following a pure conduct of life, and from the curse of being continually reincarnated in either a human or animal being, and that it could gain eternal rest as the highest reward of virtue on earth. And therefore Buddhism taught self-command, self-denial and self-conquest; the love of all beings either man or beast: patience with others, the sons of different castes, and patience too with the followers of all other religions.

The original Buddhism can’t be called a religion, for it knew no god and didn’t believe in a personal immortality. But like any other creation of time and of human desire to form and reform again and again, Buddhism also lost much of its original character, and so it came to pass that Buddhism in the first year of our era after its separation into two main sections, the so-called _southern_ and _northern_ churches, especially the last mentioned or the _Mahâyâna_ acknowledged, besides the Buddha of this world, quite other Buddhas to be the redeemers of former and future worlds, whilst the Buddhists thought all of them to be the revelations of a same original and impersonal deity, _Adi-Buddha_; and even the gods or some of the gods of the Hindus were admitted as the awatâras of the same first _Buddha_[2]. It may be easily understood that this Buddhism also invented hell in contradiction to heaven. However, by no means an abode for the eternal damned, such as the hell of Christianity alludes to.

But the southern church, the Hînayâna swerved less far from the ancient doctrine, though it may be true that it did not always keep its originality, for in its pagodae, are also found a few sculptures honoured there as the representations of Buddha himself[3].

Since some centuries Buddhism has been repelled from its country of birth by the ancient Hinduism. Its place was taken by the shivaistic and other Hindu religions which at their turn again were partly superseded by Islâmism.

But the Hînayânistic worship still exists in _Ceylon_ and in Further-India at _Burma_, and _Siam_ and _Kamboja_ and Mahâjânism at _Népâl_ and at _Tibet_ and, more or less degenerated, in _China_ and _Japan_. It flourished for some centuries in the island of Java, but became entirely exterminated by the fanatic and absolutely intolerant followers of _Allah_ and _Mohammed_.

This was death after life; slavery after the command 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.

II.

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.

III.

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.

It may be easily imagined however, that also the _Båråbudur_ must have been such a depository, and so much the more, because of its being too large to think of a mausoleum built in honour of even the most powerful prince of that empire.

In flat defiance of _Rhys Davids_’s opinion who declared the Båråbudur to be only 7 centuries old, we, on the other hand, are inclined to give this monument, according to later data, more than eleven centuries[8].

That the Buddhists of Central Java were a powerful nation at that period of time may fully appear from the extent and splendour of the building which surpasses all other Buddha- and Hindu temples on all the earth.

And though it may be true that the grouping of the rock temples of _Alara_ (vulg. _Ellora_) and _Ajunta_ in India occupies more room, and granting _Angkor_ in _Kamboja_ (which wasn’t a Buddhist temple) to seem more majestic when seen at a distance, still, according to competent judges who also visited these ruins, the Båråbudur is grander by far as well for the unity of its whole as for the harmony of its different parts, and for both the nobleness of the schemer’s thought and the excellence of the execution.

This harmony supports the opinion of this building’s having been built after the scheme of one and the very same architect; a man of a surprising intellectual capacity indeed, who could have conceived such a scheme to be carried out in an incalculable number of years by hundreds of thousands of labourers.

We cannot possibly believe that so much labour and time would have been spent on the building of a prince’s mausoleum, however powerful he might have been.

Moreover, there are reasons enough to suppose that _the_ prince of _this_ empire, at whose command the Båråbudur must have been built, commenced or partly achieved, should have died before the finishing of this colossal work, and that his ashes were buried in the sumptuous grave temple, at that period of time most likely already finished, and the ruins of which we shall visit in the _desså_ (native village) of _Mĕndut_. Or more exactly: that his successor or children or blood-relations, or perhaps his people, built this _tyanḍi_ on the pit in which those ashes had been put away, and that as a worthy mausoleum to the king who once presented his subjects with the Båråbudur.

Some unfinished parts of both the Båråbudur and the ruins in the valley of _Parambanan_, especially the unfinished imageries at the foot (hidden again under the outer-terrace) on the outer-wall of the large temple, make us suppose that these products of art had been _scarcely_ achieved, and the imageries _hardly_ finished and placed on their walls, when the buddhistic empire of Central Java fell into a state of decay or became ruined at all.

Upwards of a thousand years have rolled since over these colossal ruins. Earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions replaced their masses of stone, solar heat and torrents introduced and supported their decay, parasitic plants dispersed their foundations, and narrow-minded slaves of ignorance and fanaticism damaged or spoilt many of their produce of art—still the ruins stand there as an impressive fact scarcely no less uncredible than undeniable; a majestic product of a master-mind of the past, a stone epic immortal even in its decline.

On account of its general form (“_par le dessin général, mais par là seulement_”) the French scholar about Indian matters _A. Barth_ called the Båråbudur the only _stûpa_ in Java[9], and this may be just when we understand a _stûpa_ to be only those barrows where were buried some ashes or another relic of the Buddha himself, and when we consider all other _tyanḍis_ in this island—with the exception of the monasteries which are no _tyanḍis_—to be nothing else but the mausolea of sons of Princes, or of _gurus_ and monks, or belonging perhaps to other noble men and women.

Hereabove we already saw reasons enough to make us suppose that _Tyanḍi Mĕndut_ had been built on the ashes of the prince of the buddhistic empire of which we don’t know anything but its having been supreme in Central Java for at least eleven centuries ago.

These ruins stand in the village after which they have been named, along the road leading from _Jogyåkartå_ to the _Båråbudur_, not far from the _Magĕlang_ route, and as they are the first we reach on our way from one of the two capitals, and generally visited, we shall therefore first describe this most interesting grave temple.

Tyanḍi Mĕndut.

Leaving Jogyåkartå by steamtram or by carriage, and driving through the dessa of _Muntilan_—properly speaking a Chinese settlement—,turning two or three miles farther on near the stopping-place of _Kalangan_, 8 miles south of _Magĕlang_, into a by-path leading westward to the Båråbudur, we, within an hour, shall arrive at the real javanese village of _Mĕndut_, which is situated on the left bank of the river _Élo_. On this spot, as it were under the shadow of the Buddha temple, eleven centuries old at least, a Roman Catholic mission built a little church and parsonage, and opened a school for javanese children.

Living Christianity near the ruins of dead Buddhism!

Heavy teak wooden scaffoldings surrounded these ruins on all sides, and on the north-western frontside solid wooden stairs lead upward till under the _attap_[10] temporary roof. This was to protect the Båråbudur’s pyramidical roof (at that time not yet shut off again) and protect also the three almost undamaged gigantic images from rain and sun-blaze. This scaffolding still appeared as a witness of _W. A. van de Kamer_’s clever diligence. Some eleven years ago, when in Government’s service as official for ways and roads, he got the order given to him by choice, to begin the work of restoration, and that above his own work as overseer in service of the Department of Public Works. Notwithstanding, he continued for three years this enterprise trusted to him, and without any other reward but the title of architect the diploma of which he had already got in Netherland for many years ago. Under his command, and without any accident, he had the heavy and badly menaced pyramidic roof brought downward, and he succeeded in having the decaying and declining walls erected again, and that in a manner (as I once witnessed) unconditionally admired by competent experts, among whom I know high-placed engineer officers. But his work became unjustly objected by the philological president of a newly appointed Båråbudur committee he saw suddenly placed above him (_van de Kamer_), and the pitiable manner in which the former official induced him to ask for exemption from the labour dear to him, and to retire from Government’s service some years afterwards, I already explained and blamed in 1901 by means of some non-published writings, because the latter, still subordinate at that time, could not defence himself, and above all, because of my being competent and obliged to do so as an honest man, loyal to the ancient device: “_Fais ce que dois, advienne que pourra_”. Even to me this deed became a source of misunderstanding and grief.

The first striking thing we see is that, in contravention to almost all other buddhistic buildings, the frontage of these ruins have not been placed opposite to the East, the sun-rise, but strange enough, opposite to the Northwest. When I first visited this temple in 1875 I saw that the porch which had been built before this frontage, had partly disappeared. Only its side-walls, the greater part at least, and fortunately, the two interesting sculptures had remained. This was also the case with the 14 large stone steps leading from without to the same porch, and flanked by heavy holds in the form of the _garuḍa-nâga_ ornament we are going to know by-and-by.

The colossal pyramidic roof, and part of the front wall above and north of the entrance to the inner-room were greatly lost.

The two sculptures before the entrance show us, to the left, a princess in a garden of fruit-trees, with a suckling at her breast, and many playing children all round about her. And opposite to them, to the right, we see an Indian,—_not_ buddhistic—prince with much more children in such another garden.

All the children wear a crescent of the moon on the hind part of their heads, but both the children and their parents miss everything that might have spoken of a buddhistic character. The prince himself wears a three stringed cord of a caste (_upavîta_), and is therefore characterised as a _not_ buddhistic one. Buddhism doesn’t know any caste.

Nevertheless, there are Dutch scholars who suppose this prince to be _Buddha_’s father, this woman _Buddha_’s mother. Even professor _Kern_ wrote to me that this woman with her suckling should be nobody else but _Mayâ_ with her son in _Lumbini_ garden. The Indian prince however, remained inexplicable.

The buddhistic king of Siam, _Chula Longkorn_, gave me in 1896 another and far better explanation which solved all difficulties, and to which I’ll come back again after having first given a superficial description of the gigantic images we see in this temple.

Let us therefore enter through the opened iron railing now replacing the wooden inner door, which for more than some 70 years ago, was used perhaps, as fire-wood.

The space before the unadorned south-easterly back-wall is occupied by a heavy altar-shaped throne not yet long ago newly built in an exceedingly simple style.

And on this throne sits a colossal _Buddha_ image, by no means however, a nude one, so as professor _Veth_ wrongly wrote in his standard work: “_Java_,” but this is dressed in the cowl of the _southern_ Buddhists uncovering his right shoulder and arm; his two legs dangling and resting on a small cushion with his two hands before his breast in such a posture (_mudrâ_) as the Mahâyânists, the followers of the “_Big Carriage_” of the _northern_ church, generally (not always) give to the _first_ of their five _Dhyâni-Buddhas_. In Ceylon and in Farther India however, there where _Hînayânism_ of the _southern_ church still exists, which doesn’t know any Dhyâni-Buddha, this posture simply means “_blessing_.”

To the right of this Buddha nearly 4 yards high, we see a _buddhistic_ prince seated on a throne abundantly decorated with nâgas, lions, and elephants, and ornamented with lotus-cushions and feet cushions. The monk’s hood, the bottom of which goes under the princely garb over his left shoulder and breast, and the small _Buddha_ image in his crown characterise him as a _Buddhist_, and that in contradistinction to the other prince we see opposite him, to the left of the Buddha. And though this prince also has his seat on an equally richly ornamented throne, yet we don’t see any image in his crown, and then he doesn’t wear a monk’s hood, but only the three-stringed _upavîta_ which characterises him as _not_ buddhistic.

On this ground professor Kern thought this Indian prince as inexplicable as the other one we saw in the porch before the entrance.

The two kings wear the _prabha_, or disk of light, on the back part of their heads. _Buddha_ does not, or no more; for this may have been fixed to the wall of the temple, and afterwards fallen down after that the image itself had slidden from its seat, or before its having been placed there[11].

On account of the posture of his hands before his breast there are some Dutch scholars who suppose this _Buddha_ to be the first _Dhyâni-Buddha Vairotyana_, and the two other princes they think to be _Bodhisattvas_ or future Buddhas, whilst the one on the north-easterly wall is said to be the _fourth_ Dhyâni-Bodhisatthva, _Padmapâni_ because of his being provided with a small image of the fourth Dhyâni-_Buddha_, _Amitâbha_, in his crown.

Which Bodhisatthva we then must see in that other image nobody could tell us, because it misses all attributes.

This however, is also the case with the buddhistic king’s image, and though it may be provided with a Buddha image in its crown, occasionally given to some Bodhisatthvas, yet it doesn’t characterise every wearer as such.

Moreover, I more than once demonstrated that _all_ the crowns are provided with no other image but the one of the Buddha himself in his posture of _meditation_ (or rest after death), and therefore we can’t accept these images to be Bodhisatthvas, or more especially _Padmapâni_, the Bodhisattva of the fourth Dhyâni-Buddha who, after all, should have been characterised by this Bodhisatthva’s usual attribute, the _padma_ or lotus placed near his face. But these two images also miss this flower and the stem of the lotus which the Bodhisatthvas generally keep in their _left_ hands. Sometimes however, we see them in their _right_ hand, and the flower with the symbol above one or two leaves.