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
But which will be the _sixth_ Buddha represented there by _all_ the
sculptures of the fifth and highest encircling wall, and dominating
_all_ the zones of heaven, but which _can’t be a Dhyâni-Buddha_?
That’s a new enigma rightly explained by the king of Siam, I
suppose,[77] and which I’m going to show directly.
And that the unfinished Buddha of the _large_ dagob _can’t_ represent
the _fifth_ Dhyâni-Buddha appears from the posture of the hands which
would refer to the _second_, 92 times hewed on the eastern
lower-walls.
Should it represent a _Dhyâni_-Buddha, it must be this one and for
such an idea _I_ can’t find any reason.
Had the _Mahâyânists_ had the intention to place there one of their
five _Dhyâni_-Buddhas, they surely would have rendered homage to their
_own_ Redeemer, the _fourth_. The four other ones may have only had a
legendary-historical sense, consequently also the _second_. In spite
of the _mudrâ_ of this second _Dhyâni_-Buddha the image itself should
not be meant as Akshobhya, but simply as the perfect Buddha, the
_Shakya having taking flesh as Buddha_—for this is the meaning of this
_mudrâ_ even to the Buddhists of the southern church _who don’t know
several Dhyânis_ but the _only_ Buddha.
And as these five Dhyâni-Buddhas don’t wholly explain the images of
the Båråbudur, and don’t wholly expound the _sixth_, I therefore
thought it reasonable to take all the Buddhas of the five encircling
walls as one separated group, those of the three circular terraces as
a _second_, and the ones of the closed dagob as the only
representative of a _third_, whereas the placing of the sculptures on
these five walls should be connected with the _five_ zones of heaven
Siddhârta took possession of after his birth[78].
Should this group represent the Buddha perhaps, with reference to the
human- and animal world described by the sculptures hewed beneath
there, we then may refer to Wilsen’s and Leemans’ and accept the
images (_taken from the mentioned world_) of the upper-terraces to be
the Buddha as _Arahat_ in a state of supreme purity or holiness, in
the _nirvâna_, perhaps. The Buddha wholly enclosed by the large dagob,
and so positively separated from the world, may refer to the
_parinirvâna_, that is, the _wholly_ dissolving in the infinite
_not-to-be_; _death without regeneration_, the _final purpose of all
life_[79].
For this dagob is a closed grave in which for about, or at least,
eleven centuries ago the Buddhists may have hidden the vase containing
some ashes of the really died Buddha; a trace of the remainders of the
great wise man, the spotless preacher; a minim quantity of the
Master’s ashes, the divine redeemer of all that lives and suffers,
that thinks, feels and dies.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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