Chapter XI

It only remains for me now to add a short description to the _Buddha_ sculptures which made the ruin call: _Båra-buddå_ or _Pårå buddå_, that is, the _many_ or _conjoint Buddhas_.[72].

All of them are in a sitting posture with crossed legs, almost in the same posture the Javanese call _silå_, but upright.

They are dressed in a thin mantle uncovering their right arms and shoulders—such as the monks of the southern church wear their cowls—and have the _tiara_, the round hair-knot, on their heads all covered with short curls. Even the _ûrnâ_, the little tuft of hair on their fronts is still to be seen on many a sculpture, and on the other ones, less accurately hewn, they are forgotten[73].

The posture of all of them tells resignation and peace, and may speak of the later final dissolving in the _nirvâna_, the joy- and painless _not-to-be_.

But the sculptor didn’t succeed in interpreting all the sculptures in this sense. Not all the sculptors had been equally good artists for they must have had much more work the best of them might have finished alone.

Among the sculptures placed opposite the _five_ zones of heaven, the East, South, West and North and the Zenith, there is to be seen a _slight_ difference in the posture of the right hands, and something more difference in the posture of the _two_ hands with regard to those sculptures we see on the round terraces. _All_ the sculptures on the _five_ encircling walls have been hewn with their left hands in their laps, that is, with the palm on the right foot. Those on the _four lower walls_ have (on the east side) their right hands with their backs, on the _south_ side these very same hands with the palms upwards on the right knees; those of the _west_ (opposite to the setting sun) hold both their hands in their laps, and those of the _north_ rise their right hands a little above the right thigh, palm forward, and the _five_ fingers closed together in a perpendicular line.

The sculptures of the _whole fifth_ and _highest_ walls dominating _all_ the regions of heaven only distinguish themselves from those on the _northern_ lower walls by means of the _bent_ index of the raised right hand forming a _closed circle_ with the somewhat joined thumb, that is, because of the stone’s brittleness.

The sculptures of the open worked _tyaityas_ on the three round terraces however, raise their _two_ hands before the epigastric region, the left one with the palm and the bent finger-tips in an upward direction, the right one with the palm to the left and the fingers bent over those of the other hand[74]. 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. There is consequently more difference than between the sculptures of the five encircling walls.

There is still another sculpture unique of its kind.

When, a long time ago, in the beginning of our last century, the middle-dagob was opened a double space was found inside, a smaller above a larger one, and, among others, a Buddha image corresponding in size to all other sculptures, whereas the posture of the hands tallied with those on the _eastern_ lower walls[75].

This image having been unfinished can’t be ascribed to the merest chance or to an untimely stop of the temple-building, because the dagob itself, where it had been _wholly closed in_, was finished afterwards.

So it must have been intentionally left in this state, but _I_ can’t possibly accept the supposition that it should refer to the _future_ [fifth] Dhyâni-Buddha in state of being.

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.

Besides, the hypothesis challenged by me would not yet solve still existing mysteries, but would only give rise to other enigmas which don’t bring us any farther.

The explanation of the fact may be much simpler.

_I_ think it may have been considered quite unnecessary to finish a sculpture in such an accurate manner like all the other ones, if it should be hidden from sight for ever.

What is the meaning of these different Buddhas?

According to the posture of the hands we may divide them into _six_—according to other data into _three_ groups. _Nothing more_ and _nothing less_.

The _three_ groups are:

1. The 432 Buddhas of the open temple-niches on the five richly hewed
encircling walls, all of them seated on lotus-thrones and crowned
with glories.

2. The 72 Buddhas of the open worked _tyaityas_ on the three round
terraces, without any glory or lotus-throne but represented by the
_padmâsana_ of the tyaitya-foot. But even the human and animal
world hewn under the niche-Buddhas we don’t see there again.

3. The _only_ Buddha of the large dagob entirely sequestered, without
glory or throne, but seated above the _padmâsana_ which carries
the whole dagob.

The posture of the hands however, ought to refer to _six_ groups,
because there are _six_ different _mudrâs_.

Wilhelm von Humboldt was the first who considered _five_ of the _six_
Buddhas to be the representations of the five _Dhyâni_-Buddhas.

_Three_ of them: Vairotyana, Akshobhya and Ratna Sambhava successively
redeemed and ruled over three following former worlds; the _fourth_,
Amitâbha—our Gautama or _Shakya-muni_—ruled over _our_ world these 24
centuries, and is said to be succeeded, after the creation of a new
world, by the _fifth_ and last, Amogasiddha, the _Buddha of love_.

Especially in the posture of the hands there is some conformity
between five of the six Båråbudur-images and the five Dhyâni-Buddhas
such as we see them hewed in Asia. But there are also some points of
difference.

In the Mongol countries, for instance, the _two first_ Dhyâni-Buddhas
are throning in the East; the _third_ in the South, the _fourth_ in
the West and the _fifth_ in the North[76].

Taking, according to the posture of the hands, the images of our ruins
to be _Dhyâni_-Buddhas the East would then be only occupied by the
_second_ and the _zenith_ by the first of them, that is, above the
round terraces which don’t dominate any region of heaven. But this
happens more elsewhere in Asia.

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.

Mr. Foucher starts from the principle that he doesn’t like to contradict
the explanation as if these _Buddha_ images were to represent
_Dhyâni-Buddhas_, but he means that they should be examined more
closely, and completed, and that the different groups ought to be
judged again after severe study.

As for the present he discerns:

1, the _bhunisparsya mudrâ_ in the 92 niches on the 4 first walls to
_the East_;

2, to the _South_ the _vara-mudrâ_;

3, to the _West_ the _dhyâni-mudrâ_;

4, to the _North_ the _abhaya-mudrâ_, and

5, in the 64 niches on the fifth and highest wall the _vitarka-mudrâ_
(the gesture of _discussion_) and higher, among the 72 cupolae of
the 3 circular terraces:

6, the _dharma-tyakra-mudrâ_ (mark of distinction), and finally the
_only_ sculpture from the wholly closed _dagob_, hewed in the
_bhumi-sparsya-mudrâ_.

So there is a slight difference between Foucher’s idea about the north-indian _Mahâyânists_ and my defended explanation of the _Siam Hînayânists_.

“_This is Buddha preaching the tyakra_” said king Tsyula Longkorn to me, “_and this means the tyakra_”, joining the tops of the thumb and the index of his right hand so as to form something like a circle.

This seemed convincing to me, and I found this idea confirmed not only on all and still undamaged statues on the highest wall, but also, and especially, on a great many _relievoes_ of the second gallery which represent the _Buddha_ in a preaching posture.

It is true that the exactness of this view of mine had been indirectly _denied_ by my great official antagonist, the late Dr. Brandes, but never did he dispute or refute this scientifically.

Mr. Groeneveldt, formerly the most competent authority on our Hindu sculptures in the Dutch Indies, thought the unfinished image of the middle-dagob to be a representation of the _Adi-Buddha_, and this would certainly have expounded this statue in it separately placing, if this _im_material _primeval_ Buddha might have been ever represented in a material image. And there are more objections than only this _impersonality_ of the divine primeval being materially revealing himself in the different _Buddhas_, and consequently _not_ hewed at _Nepâl_ and _Tibet_ but only represented by a symbol, a circle or two eyes[80].

Would the mahâyânistic architects of the Båråbudur have acted in quite a different sense?

_I_ don’t see any _Dhyâni_-Buddha in this Buddha, but only the _perfect_ preacher _having taken flesh_ as the Buddha, the Master, who, though he did die, continues to live as long as _this his_ world will exist.

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_.

Buddha has been consequently hewed there as _preacher, preaching the doctrine_ to all people, and _consequently_ towards _all_ the regions of heaven. And this teaching of the king-Buddhist has been perfectly confirmed by the fact that on _all_ the sculptures (especially on those we also see on the backwall of the second gallery) the thumb and the index join each other in the very same manner.

That this preaching preacher has been placed upon the highest wall will be easily understood if we consider the preaching of the doctrine to be the highest vital expression of Buddhism, and possibly referred to both the world of the four zones of heaven and to the one of the celestials in the _zenith_.