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].