Dissimilar as they are in height and depth of the steps, they sometimes occupy the greater part of the floor of the surrounding galleries. Even the doorways once covering them from terrace to terrace, but which now have for the greater part disappeared, were less proportioned to the whole, and therefore not always equally rich in style, and beauty. It still appears from that which has remained that the side-posts of these doorways—just as those of each niche—had been formed by the serpent’s bodies of two _nâgas_ whose tails ended into the mule of a monster-head we saw above the doorway. We already came across this very same motif on our walk round the niches, and on the banisters of _tyanḍi Mĕndut_ and _tyanḍi Pawon_, and find it back in all the Buddha temples in Java, especially in those of the plain of _Parambanan_, and in the ruins of the temple group of this name whose buddhistic character will not be easily acknowledged. At the foot of the doorway (or of the niche) these _nâga_-heads ended into outward turned mythical monster-heads which, at first sight remind us of elephants rather than of snake-like animals, because their upper lips generally (not always) change into a trunk curled up on their foreheads. Wilhelm von Humboldt and after him all European examiners, among whom the Dutch scholar Leemans, therefore took these monstrous figures for elephant’s heads without perceiving however, that they changed into serpent’s bodies when seen on the side-posts of the doorways; they also didn’t see the relation there was between these heads and the monster-head above the doorways and niches. Many years ago I had been misguided myself, and in the beginning I even defended my error against the king of Siam who was, for all I know, the only one that disputed this, and H. M. succeeded in convincing me by logical argumentation. In this ornament the _nâga_ represents a power inimical to buddhism, and the monster which conquers this power by crushing the enemy’s tail should be, according to the Siam opinion, _Rahu_ who also tries to devour the sun during every eclipse. This is comprehensible because this _Rahu_ has always been represented as a head only, and after that his body severed from his head by _Vishnu_’s tyakra, had fallen into the sea and perished.