The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c11.4

c11.4

No doubt, we must in the first place take account of the difference in dimensions. The rectangular base of the Khmer monument has an exterior measurement of 187 by 215 metres; the lower terrace of the Javanese building forms a square of 111 metres on each side. The former attains an elevation of 57 metres, whilst the present summit of the second does not reach 35 metres above the first steps. It is well likewise to note that the latter, older by three centuries or so and exposed to the same destructive agents — torrential rains and the luxuriant vegetation of the Tropics — is in a worse state of preservation (¹). But, after all, we must acknowledge that the two monuments, even at the time of their unimpaired splendour, had from an architectural point of view nothing in common. Angkor-Vat deploys on tiers rising above the plain its three enclosing galleries, intersected by portals, flanked by eight towers and crowned by a ninth : Boro-Budur encompasses the summit of a hill with the sacred number of its nine terraces, connected at the four cardinal points by staircases and surmounted by a dome. At Angkor-Vat the eye ranges through the colonnades or follows in the distance the ever narrowing flight of the porticoes; at Boro-Budur the lower galleries, interrupted by twenty right angles and confined on the exterior by a high parapet, narrowly enclose the visitor in their successive recesses (¹). In Cambodia, whether from the end of the paved approaches he contemplates the clearly defined silhouette of the towers, or whether from the top of the central group he dominates the widely spaced plan of the enclosures, the spectator always embraces in his view the grandiose scheme of the design. In Java, from the foot as from the top, nothing is ever perceived but a compact mass confusedly bristling with 432 niches and 72 little cupolas forming so many pinnacles. The fact is that Angkor-Vat led the devotee by the perspective of long avenues straight to the dwelling of a god; Boro-Budur, on the contrary, opened no access in its massive sides, which were destined solely as a shrine for relics. In one word, the first is a Brahmanic temple; the second is a *stûpa*, or Buddhist tumulus.