I. Groneman

“ Deep, ever greening and blooming, or, in harvest-time, brown-yellow or earth-colored planes, most often cloud-likely bedewed early at morn, breathing life and enjoyment of life, so to say under the powerful ribs of mount Mĕnoreh, badly bursten and highly crowned, and the cloud-like tops of craters of more than three volcanoes, and the active Mĕrapi still vomitting death or destruction in their surroundings, but also producing new life on the soil all covered with time-worn volcanic-ruins. ”

“ The Shâkya Muni accomplished his purpose at last. He got all knowledge, and truth became his power. He has ripened to appear as Buddha, the Enlightened, the awaking luminary celestial, to come in the world wrapped in darkness, to teach the true doctrine, the dharma, and redeem mankind from sin. ”

“ This Buddhism taught that mankind might be freed from any sensual passion, and sin by following a pure conduct of life, and from the curse of being continually reincarnated in either a human or animal being, and that it could gain eternal rest as the highest reward of virtue on earth. And therefore Buddhism taught self-command, self-denial and self-conquest; the love of all beings either man or beast: patience with others, the sons of different castes, and patience too with the followers of all other religions. ”

“ Living in the primeval forest as a strong buffalo the Buddha of after life was continually teased by a monkey who, taunting the wild animal’s inexhaustible kindness, perpetually came in his way.
A yaksha admonishes the bull to be less patient and to crush or thrust down the snarer, but the strong one answers that the monkey can’t be otherwise than he now is, and that they should bear him as he is. There is no better exercise in meekness than suffer a bad treatment patiently, and by which one may hope to set the snarer thinking, and make him turn from sin. ”

“ Or will the rain-water continually permeate through and under the invaluable ruin, and carry away its bottom, and assure at last the ruin of the richest and most beautiful Hindu-work of art we possess, which, in all India and even in the mainland, speaks of the Buddha?... ”

“ Earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions replaced their masses of stone, solar heat and torrents introduced and supported their decay, parasitic plants dispersed their foundations, and narrow-minded slaves of ignorance and fanaticism damaged or spoilt many of their produce of art—still the ruins stand there as an impressive fact scarcely no less uncredible than undeniable ”

“ But like any other creation of time and of human desire to form and reform again and again, Buddhism also lost much of its original character, and so it came to pass that Buddhism in the first year of our era after its separation into two main sections, the so-called southern and northern churches, especially the last mentioned or the Mahâyâna acknowledged, besides the Buddha of this world, quite other Buddhas to be the redeemers of former and future worlds, whilst the Buddhists thought all of them to be the revelations of a same original and impersonal deity, Adi-Buddha ”

“ When in 1896 I was obliged to retire from practice, on account of sickness, I shortly after took up my residence at Jogyåkartå again in order to devote myself to the antiquarian and ethnological studies dear to me, and to which purpose I had to establish myself in the neighbourhood of the principal Hindu ruins in Java, that is, in the plain of Parambanan, and in the valley of Prågå whereas I could not rely on being assisted by the Dutch Government or whomsoever; I had grown too old under a system of Government who even refuse a professor septuagenarian to follow his profession. ”

“ That Siam’s king declared the two images before the entrance to be the representations of the buddhistic king’s parents with their children seemed more than reasonable to me, especially, because of all difficulties being solved then. Didn’t Mayâ, like any other mother of Buddha, die seven days after his birth? And then, all writings known to me, don’t mention anything about Siddhârta’s brothers or sisters. And all these children can’t possibly be angels or celestials, because in the smaller panels, above the groups in the porch, we always see them hewn floating in the air. ”

“ And when we wish to judge and understand the temples built by these Buddhists, we also ought to start from that point of view, and accept the hero of the legend as if he should have really lived, and suffered in order to redeem the world from the burden of the sin of life, and from the curse of death, and infinite regenerations. ”

“ Competent Orientalists, among whom the Dutch ex-professor Dr. H. Kern, stated however that, much about those legends that cannot be true from a historical point of view, will become quite comprehensible and possible as soon as taken in a mythical sense, and when we understand the hero of the myth to be a sun-god. And then it will be perfectly indifferent to us, non-Buddhists, whether those legends may or may not have historical foundations and whether the Buddha of the Buddhists may have really lived and existed or not. ”

“ Six years of misery convinced the wise Shâkya that a sound spirit can live in a sound body only.
The sculptor of these scenes incorrigibly hewed the disciples’ dislike in their Master’s changed opinion, which is to be seen in their spokesman’s posture. The hands of this man are a masterpiece of expression. It would be a loss never to be remedied if these hands were taken away, which, after all, would be of no value to the robber because they can’t give back the proportion to their arms and bodies. Nothing, however, is safe from the rapaciousness of foolish tourists-compilers. ”

“ It goes without saying that even the Mahâyânists honoured, among others, the Buddha of this their world, Amitâbha, as their Lord and Redeemer, putting faith in his life on earth as man and prince’s son, as ascetic and preacher, just as the Israelites do believe in the personage of their Jahvé, their Lord God of Hosts, their god of battle and revenge, and just like our German ancestors trusted in Odhin, and Thor, and in the dying sun-god Baldur. ”

“ We cannot possibly believe that so much labour and time would have been spent on the building of a prince’s mausoleum, however powerful he might have been.
Moreover, there are reasons enough to suppose that the prince of this empire, at whose command the Båråbudur must have been built, commenced or partly achieved, should have died before the finishing of this colossal work, and that his ashes were buried in the sumptuous grave temple, at that period of time most likely already finished, and the ruins of which we shall visit in the desså (native village) of Mĕndut. ”

“ Nowadays this water permeates through the time-worn stones into the rather loose soil of the hill till under the ruin. Dropping through all lower joints, and between the stones falling asunder more and more upon which the heavy stûpa has been built, it can’t be otherwise or all this is to destroy the ruin more and more, and sooner or later there will come a time when the temple itself shall partly or wholly fall to the ground, ... when the Dutch Government don’t know to prevent this by doing all that will be indisputably necessary. ”

“ Some unfinished parts of both the Båråbudur and the ruins in the valley of Parambanan, especially the unfinished imageries at the foot (hidden again under the outer-terrace) on the outer-wall of the large temple, make us suppose that these products of art had been scarcely achieved, and the imageries hardly finished and placed on their walls, when the buddhistic empire of Central Java fell into a state of decay or became ruined at all. ”

“ A future, not yet existing Buddha can’t be materialized by a half-sculptured image, and the fifth Dhyâni-Buddha is never hewed in the posture of the hands of the second, but always, such as on the northern lower walls, in his own mudrâ whereas the future Buddhas as Bodhisattvas were represented not only in other postures but also in another dress and ornament and with their own attributes. ”

“ After a moment’s hesitation his former rescuer begs him for a little bit of the antelope’s meat, but the lion asks the beggar whether he is tired of life, and whether he ought not to be thankful that his life was spared when he formerly ventured himself into the inquirer’s mule. A lion doesn’t know any commiseration.
Ashamed the wood-pecker flies away. A sylvan deity follows him, and asks why he doesn’t pick the lion’s eyes, and takes as much of the prey as he likes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the main temples of the Parambanan group, with the exception of tyanḍi Shiva, there was no place for these lights. The altar-shaped 20 pedestals of the images were much smaller there, and round about them there was but little room.
This temple’s walls hewn with exquisitely modelled festoons had also no niches, and could not have had them unless one would have partly sacrificed its panels. ”

“ I think it my duty to point to the following sculptures of the upper series of the front-wall which represent no jâtakas but refer to the Buddha of after life.
After the eastern staircase and the second corner, 15 (W. L., 28) .
Buddha in a preaching posture forming the tyakra with the thumb and index of his right arm such as all Buddhas do, we see hewn in the niches of the highest, fifth, wall [57] .
Lotus-throne and prabha, style of hair-dress and costume have been hewn in the same manner as those of the Buddhas of all niches. All round about him we see auditors rendering homage to him. ”

“ I suppose that, when their predecessors left India for Java, they are likely to have brought a vase or urn containing some real or pretended ashes of the Buddha himself in order to bury them under a simple hill or in an artless dagob as soon as they had reached the place of their settling, to render these ashes to the worship of the believers, and to make them suppose as if this hill or cairn were the real grave of the Master himself. ”

“ Each posture of the hands has its own meaning, and there are much more than five mudrâs even in the hînayânistic countries like Siam where one doesn’t know any Dhyâni-Buddha.
This also refers to the posture of the sixth, for a long time unexplained Buddha on the highest encircling wall whose mudrâ was rightly called dharma tyakra [81] . Thumb and index, circularly joined together, represent the tyakra, god Vishnu’s disc, the sun, the symbol of the dharma, the buddhistic Doctrine. ”

“ Many a sculpture reminded him there that self-conquest, self-command, singleness and purity of heart, veracity and meekness, and the love for all beings, either man or beast, were to lead him to that final purpose. ”

“ All the children wear a crescent of the moon on the hind part of their heads, but both the children and their parents miss everything that might have spoken of a buddhistic character. The prince himself wears a three stringed cord of a caste (upavîta) , and is therefore characterised as a not buddhistic one. Buddhism doesn’t know any caste.
Nevertheless, there are Dutch scholars who suppose this prince to be Buddha’s father, this woman Buddha’s mother. Even professor 15 Kern wrote to me that this woman with her suckling should be nobody else but Mayâ with her son in Lumbini garden. ”

“ Moreover, they all miss the glory and have not been placed in open temple-niches above a human and mythical- and animal world represented by many sculptures, but hewn in transparently closed graves, and in higher spheres above this world. ”

“ 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] . ”

“ It may be easily understood that this Buddhism also invented hell in contradiction to heaven. However, by no means an abode for the eternal damned, such as the hell of Christianity alludes to.
But the southern church, the Hînayâna swerved less far from the ancient doctrine, though it may be true that it did not always keep its originality, for in its pagodae, are also found a few sculptures honoured there as the representations of Buddha himself [3] . ”

“ Once driving through the residence the young man saw much that set him thinking; he saw how old age, sickness and death threatened everyone while storms, inundations and fire destructed their properties. ”