Leaving the native village of Mĕndut behind us, crossing shortly after
the small iron bridge built over the river _Elo_, and after having been
ferried over the Praga, when a mile’s drive farther westward, we arrive
at the little dukuh of _Bråjånålå_ (or _Bråjånalan_) where we see the
very small _tyanḍi Pawon_ before our having turned into the broad
_kĕnari_-avenue which leads through the native village of _Bårå_ to the
hill of the Båråbudur. Some years ago this _tyanḍi_ had been pulled down
and afterwards rebuilt again. Its name which means “kitchen” is clear
enough to make us understand how the Javanese would have shown the
striking contrast between this small temple and the other more extensive
one, as if it were a kitchen compared with a mansion or temple.
Why then was this small ruin pulled down and afterwards rebuilt again?
It once stood there under the shadow, partly upon and among the roots of
a gigantic tree, the most beautiful _randu alas_ or “wild cotton-tree”
(_Bombax malabaricus_ D. C.) I ever saw. A whole, so strikingly
beautiful that it charmed the eyes of all who understood a little the
language of lines and forms (and colours), and of harmony and contrast.
“An image of life which kills, and rises again from death.”
In 1901 conducting the Jena professor Ernst Haeckel to this spot, when
on our journey home from the ruins of the Båråbudur, 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.
And even to him the mutilation this majestic tree had already undergone
in its frame of roots beautifully formed by nature, seemed to be a
sacrilege _against_—just as very long ago the destruction of ancient
art—_by_ Nature. But the latter worked quite unconsciously whereas the
profaning hand of man _did not_.
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.
The architect van de Kamer, one of the two members of the former
Båråbudur Committee however, did not. He also thought it wrong to
sacrifice this tree “not because the ruin doesn’t show us anything else
we don’t know better preserved elsewhere; but because it might have been
pulled down stone by stone, and then ... rebuilt again _without_ killing
the tree itself.” That which had been hidden under the ... tree on the
north side was crushed long ago, and I therefore thought the felling
down of this tree a useless deed and _consequently_ a mistake. Attending
in 1900 the Dutch Governor-general _Roozeboom_ to these ruins we were
photographed under this tree by his adjutant the naval officer _de
Booy_, but the photographic productions soon faded. The following year I
accompanied the _Padang_ photographer C. Nieuwenhuis to _tyanḍi Pawon_
spending one night in the Båråbudur pasanggrahan (resthouse). Next day
he successfully succeeded in photographing the glorious group which
still speaks of the truth I asserted, though the tree itself has been
lost for ever.
The small ruin has some conformity to the many, almost as large grave
temples, which surround the main temple of _tyanḍi Sévu_, in Parambanan
valley, in four rectangles. Probably, also to those surrounding the
terrace of the larger ruins of the _Parambanan_ group in three
quadrangles, still, these are no truisms, because out of the 157 small
_tyanḍis_ we dug up we found nothing else but their foundations only,
and a few altar-shaped pedestals (without any escape-pipe for the
holy-water the different sculptures were aspersed with, so that these
pedestals are likely to have carried Buddha images) such as are to be
seen in the small temples of _tyanḍi Sévu_. Other ones now adorn the
premises of the residences of leaseholders living in these environs, for
instance, at the _tyanḍi Sévu_ sugar-factory.
But this conformity is not a perfect one.
A small square room with a very small porch we enter by means of some
narrow treads flanked by the _Garuḍa-Naga_ ornament, but this room is
empty and unadorned, and I haven’t known it otherwise for more than 30
years. There is only a shallow niche in each side-wall in front of the
place where once may have stood a pedestal and image.
On account of their height and breadth I estimated these niches too
shallow for an image, a long time ago, and before I knew their
destination. Just as in tyanḍi Mĕndut these niches may have been
consequently used to light the inner-part by means of little bronze or
earthenware lamps we also found elsewhere, and all this in spite of the
very small and narrow air-openings, even those in the back wall which,
though newly covered, only admit a very dim light now that the small
porch, separately roofed in, has been rebuilt and covered again even
when the two small doors remained open.
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.
The outer-walls of this small temple have been also hewn with
demi-relievoes of _Bodhisattvas_ and _bodhi_-trees with _gandharvas_.
It is an extraordinary thing that even the entrance of this
incontestably true buddhistic temple had not been made on the east side
but to the west. But as for the small tyanḍis _Sévu_ and _Parambanan_
they also did not follow this rule.
Tyanḍi Båråbudur.