Ruins of Buddhistic Temples in Prågå Valley—Tyandis Båråbudur, Mendut and Pawon — John Shaqi
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
They represent numberless, but continually modified repetitions of some
motives: a man seated near an incense-offering or a flower-vase, and a
man standing between two women, nymphs or servants; both scenes every
time separated by a single woman’s image provided with a lotus or
another symbol. This lotus may refer to female _Bodhisattvas_, otherwise
I should be inclined to think of _apsarasas_ or celestials, because I
don’t see any reason for so many _Bodhisattvîs_. And yet, why not,
provided that they are not taken as personal, legendary or historical
_Bodhisattvîs_.
Don’t we also find them in other ruins (_tyanḍi Parambanan_, and _tyanḍi
Sévu_), and in the _Sari_ and _Pĕlahosan_ cloisters?[22].
And on the top of the heavy cornice covering these imageries, stand—or
formerly stood—from distance to distance, just above the sacrificers,
small temples of a completely similar form, each of them containing a
deep niche, wherein a Buddha image on a lotus-throne provided with the
_prabha_ or disc behind his head.
A square spire with screen-shaped stories reminding us of the Siam
pagodae or of some _tyaityas_ also represented on the imageries of our
temple, crowned each small temple which had been flanked by two wings
with similar but lower spires. And between every two small niche-temples
stood—or stands—, just above the groups of the three small images, an
altar-shaped stone-block, covered by a bell-shaped _dagob_ which has or
had been crowned with a conical column.
The _front_ part of each of these dagob-pedestals has been adorned with
a sitting man’s or woman’s image with a flower-vase or an
incense-offering, or with both of them.
The _back_ parts of these niche- and dagob temples formed—and they
partly still form—an (formerly) uninterrupted cornice which carried the
small spires and the dagobs, and beneath, a single wall-opening which,
following all the re-enterings of the tridodecahedral, was only
interrupted by the four doorways which showed us a repetition (on a
larger scale) of the small niche-temples.
These stairs were and _are still_ the weak points of the architecture.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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