The true misfortune of the Boro Budoor was official indifference and negligence; and far more injurious than the fretting tooth of time or even the merciless hand of the spoiler combined with the provoking _laissez aller_ yawned in periodical circulars from the central administration, from Sleepy Hollow at Batavia, was the dabbling in archaeology of ambitious persons who posed as discoverers, the less their aptitude to digest their desultory reading, the more arrogant their cock-sureness where famous scholars reserved _their_ conclusions. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing and might have proved disastrous to the venerable temple in combination with one of their vaunted discoveries, which established beyond doubt what not a few knew well enough and never had doubted of, viz. that there was a gallery lower than its lowest uncovered terrace, wisely filled up to increase the stability of the building, very probably soon after or even before the erection of the upper storeys. The removal of the supporting layers of stone impaired, of course, the general condition of the structure and the good news of its being again in its former state, was received by many with a sigh of relief. This happened in 1885 with great flourish of trumpets, and the only benefit derived, certainly not of sufficient importance to balance the inevitable weakening of the foundations attendant on such excavations, consisted in the bringing to light of rude, scarcely decipherable inscriptions or rather scratchings,[151] and the intelligence that of the photographed sculptures, in which, so far, no representation of connected events has been recognised, twenty-four are unfinished and thirteen damaged--six wholly smashed. In 1900 new shafts were sunk for new discoveries of the long and widely known, and while this pernicious dilettantism was going on, pseudo-archaeologists vying with professed iconoclasts who should do most harm to the Boro Budoor, the Government confined itself to antiquarian pyrotechnics at the yearly debates on the colonial budget in Parliament. [Illustration: XXVIII. BASE OF THE BORO BUDOOR SHOWING THE (FILLED UP) LOWEST GALLERY (C. Nieuwenhuis.)]