Chapter X

Finding ourselves on the fourth gallery we see there twelve-treaded staircases leading to the twenty-angled upper plane which had been walled in to its outside only. Successively (concentrically thus) we see there three circular terraces continually rising one yard and a half, declining three yards, and connected with each other by means of seven or eight-treaded staircases.

Along the outer-edge of the first we see stand 32 open worked _dagobs_ or _tyaityas_; on the second there are 24, and on the third and highest 16, so altogether 72. And within this circle rises the majestic middledagob as the _only real dagob_ or _stûpa_ representing the leading idea, the final purpose of the whole ruin.

When standing on the polygonal upper plane the space between the spires of niches and _tyaityas_ of the highest wall offers a strikingly beautiful aspect deep down and far off on the surrounding mountainous landscapes; a vista we enjoy far better when from the third and highest circular terrace. The whole valley of _Prågå_ lies there westward at the foot of mount _Mĕnoreh_, a neptunian formation of volcanic materials—and, to the east, of the high twin volcanoes _Mĕrbabu_ and _Mĕrapi_, and, to the north, of the _Sumbing_, the highest volcano of this part of Central Java.

All the open worked tyaityas of the round terraces have a round foot modeled like a lotus-cushion doing duty as _Padmâsana_ which carries the sculpture (placed thereupon and inside) with its bell-shaped barrow.

The bell with square openings has a height of 1½ yard carrying a slantingly rising square stone-block crowned with an octangular cone rounded off on its top[70].

The large _middle-dagob_ has the same type, but its wails partly rise in a perpendicular line above the foot nicely framed and hewn in the style of a colossal lotus-cushion in order to finish into a flat cupola rising for at least 8 yards above the highest circular terrace.

It was van Erp who found back some fragments of the large cone, which once crowned this real _dagob_, so that he was able to finish again this _stûpa_, now wholly closed again, and crowned once more with the basis of the cone.

The unfinished _Buddha_ image found inside in its _bhumi-sparsya-mudrâ_ had been kept outside, and provisionally deposited on the hill at the north-western foot of the ruin.

Now it will be impossible to reach this _dagob_’s top because the temple-stone staircase leading to this (it should be understood however, that the staircase itself _did not belong there_), has been removed, but a walk on the highest terrace situated at the foot some 40 yards above the hill-top is still worth while, and the eyes are pleased then with the very same beautiful vista formerly to be overlooked from a brick bench placed on the damaged cupola, and overburdened as it were with the names of unknown visitors scratched upon it.

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.

In face of such a stupendous creation we feel very little—yet, as the children of the very same creation, rich, and as thinking beings happy and great[71].