Ruins of Buddhistic Temples in Prågå Valley—Tyandis Båråbudur, Mendut and PawonGroneman, I. (Isaac)
Religion
Ruins of Buddhistic Temples in Prågå Valley—Tyandis Båråbudur, Mendut and Pawon
Groneman, I. (Isaac)
Buddhist temples; Temples -- Indonesia -- Java
The small ruin has some conformity to the many, almost as large grave
temples, which surround the main temple of _tyanḍi Sévu_, in Parambanan
valley, in four rectangles. Probably, also to those surrounding the
terrace of the larger ruins of the _Parambanan_ group in three
quadrangles, still, these are no truisms, because out of the 157 small
_tyanḍis_ we dug up we found nothing else but their foundations only,
and a few altar-shaped pedestals (without any escape-pipe for the
holy-water the different sculptures were aspersed with, so that these
pedestals are likely to have carried Buddha images) such as are to be
seen in the small temples of _tyanḍi Sévu_. Other ones now adorn the
premises of the residences of leaseholders living in these environs, for
instance, at the _tyanḍi Sévu_ sugar-factory.
But this conformity is not a perfect one.
A small square room with a very small porch we enter by means of some
narrow treads flanked by the _Garuḍa-Naga_ ornament, but this room is
empty and unadorned, and I haven’t known it otherwise for more than 30
years. There is only a shallow niche in each side-wall in front of the
place where once may have stood a pedestal and image.
On account of their height and breadth I estimated these niches too
shallow for an image, a long time ago, and before I knew their
destination. Just as in tyanḍi Mĕndut these niches may have been
consequently used to light the inner-part by means of little bronze or
earthenware lamps we also found elsewhere, and all this in spite of the
very small and narrow air-openings, even those in the back wall which,
though newly covered, only admit a very dim light now that the small
porch, separately roofed in, has been rebuilt and covered again even
when the two small doors remained open.
I suppose that, just as in other such tyanḍis, there must have stood in
this dark inner-room opposite to the (westerly) entrance a small cubic
pedestal without any sidelong escape-pipe, and thereupon a small image
of the Buddha or of another buddhistic greatness. Beneath there, in a
small square pit, may have been buried an urn containing the ashes of a
_guru_ or of some monk of high standing, and finally I suppose this
small mausoleum to have been built by their surviving relations who
_generally_ but not _slavishly_ kept within the provision of the
existing examples of such a style of building.
The outer-walls of this small temple have been also hewn with
demi-relievoes of _Bodhisattvas_ and _bodhi_-trees with _gandharvas_.
It is an extraordinary thing that even the entrance of this
incontestably true buddhistic temple had not been made on the east side
but to the west. But as for the small tyanḍis _Sévu_ and _Parambanan_
they also did not follow this rule.
Tyanḍi Båråbudur.
VI.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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