Homepage
Login
Profile
BookClubs
dmBox
Read Ebook: 'Twas the Night Before Christmas by Moore Clement Clarke
Font size:
Background color:
Text color:
Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page
Ebook has 31 lines and 6494 words, and 1 pages
Page. Preface 3 Buddhistic temples in Pr?g?-valley 5 Tyan?i M?ndut 13 Tyan?i Pawon 23 Tyan?i B?r?budur 26 Concluding word 90 Errata 92
Ruins of Buddhistic temples in Pr?g?-valley.
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.
But the southern church, the H?nay?na 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.
Since some centuries Buddhism has been repelled from its country of birth by the ancient Hinduism. Its place was taken by the shivaistic and other Hindu religions which at their turn again were partly superseded by Isl?mism.
This was death after life; slavery after the command of senses; the decline of a civilisation lost for ever, and of a highly developed art whose products, by time's tooth changed into ruins, still testify to her lost greatness.
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.
We understand them to have come from India, probably from the North, but we don't know when this happened, and when they first began to deposit their Buddha ashes worthily.
That the Buddhists of Central Java were a powerful nation at that period of time may fully appear from the extent and splendour of the building which surpasses all other Buddha- and Hindu temples on all the earth.
This harmony supports the opinion of this building's having been built after the scheme of one and the very same architect; a man of a surprising intellectual capacity indeed, who could have conceived such a scheme to be carried out in an incalculable number of years by hundreds of thousands of labourers.
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.
Upwards of a thousand years have rolled since over these colossal ruins. 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; a majestic product of a master-mind of the past, a stone epic immortal even in its decline.
Tyan?i M?ndut.
Living Christianity near the ruins of dead Buddhism!
The colossal pyramidic roof, and part of the front wall above and north of the entrance to the inner-room were greatly lost.
Let us therefore enter through the opened iron railing now replacing the wooden inner door, which for more than some 70 years ago, was used perhaps, as fire-wood.
The space before the unadorned south-easterly back-wall is occupied by a heavy altar-shaped throne not yet long ago newly built in an exceedingly simple style.
On this ground professor Kern thought this Indian prince as inexplicable as the other one we saw in the porch before the entrance.
Which Bodhisatthva we then must see in that other image nobody could tell us, because it misses all attributes.
This however, is also the case with the buddhistic king's image, and though it may be provided with a Buddha image in its crown, occasionally given to some Bodhisatthvas, yet it doesn't characterise every wearer as such.
But this didn't happen.
He had taken away one of her 500 children, and remonstrated with her on the sorrow she gave the mothers of the children killed by her, in consequence of which she totally changed her character, became truly converted and afterwards honoured as a patroness of children.
But there are more things to be seen in the sanctuarium of tyan?i M?ndut.
The space within the four heavy walls is not a square or rectangular one, but rather a trapezoid with parallel front- and back walls. Its side-walls somewhat join each other from front to back. I don't know any other example of deviation from the rectangular form, and therefore try to find its meaning in the sculptor's effort to increase the impression the large images make upon the visitor, by slightly supporting its perspective.
In each niche there lies a small lotus cushion but without any image. Even in 1834 during the digging up of the ruin buried under an overgrown mound, no images were found in- or outside these niches.
What then was the meaning of them?
Those who contemplate this pseudo-vault unprejudicedly will no more regret than I do, that such a thing could have happened without having been redressed up to this date. It is true, it would cost much labour again, and money too, but this labour and money would undoubtedly be far better accounted for than that which was uselessly spent to commit such an unpardonable mistake.
Tyan?i Pawon.
Why then was this small ruin pulled down and afterwards rebuilt again?
In 1901 conducting the Jena professor Ernst Haeckel to this spot, when on our journey home from the ruins of the B?r?budur, this scholar so sensible of nature's beauty drew this rare scene in his sketch-book, and devoted himself for two or three hours to the contemplation of this combined creation of art and nature.
I know full well the most insignificant remainders of this ancient Art to be of great value to Science; as well as the creations of Nature; in my opinion however, it would have been by no means necessary to fell this gigantic tree in order to preserve this small produce of art, though others with a less developed sense for nature's beauty may be inclined to think otherwise.
Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page