Indian Sculpture and Painting, Illustrated by Typical Masterpieces, with an Explanation of their Motives and Ideals c9: Chapter VI. Bôrôbudûr, the Parthenon of Asia
Indian Sculpture and Painting, Illustrated by Typical Masterpieces, with an Explanation of their Motives and Ideals c9
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Chapter VI. Bôrôbudûr, the Parthenon of Asia
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Before we proceed further, it is desirable to state the historical reasons for including the sculptures of Java in the category of Indian art. The connection would be clear enough from the style of the sculptures, even if historical data were wanting.
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The first attempt at the colonisation of the island by Indians is attributed in the native chronicles of Java to a great and powerful prince from Gujerat, named Aji Sâka, who is said to have landed on the island about a.d. 75. He was, however, compelled to withdraw owing to a pestilence or some other calamity. This story was, perhaps, a literary embellishment of Javanese history, introduced to show the connection of the ancient royal dynasty with the Sâka kings of Northern India.
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About five centuries later, or in a.d. 603, the Javanese chronicles, with more historical certainty, record another, and this time a successful, attempt, again from the west coast of India.
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“It having been foretold,” say the chronicles, “to a king of Kúj’rat, or Gujerat, that his kingdom would decay and go to ruin altogether, the Prince resolved to send his son to Java, and, possessing the written account of Aji Sâka, which had been preserved in his family, he gave it to his son and embarked him, with about five thousand followers, for that island. Among these followers were people skilled in agriculture, artificers, men learned in medicine, able writers, and military men.
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“They sailed in six large ships and upwards of a hundred small, and, after a voyage of four months, reached what they thought to be the island of Java; but it did not accord with the account given by Ali Sâka, so they re-embarked. In a few months they came in sight of an island with a long range of mountains, and some of them, with the Prince at their head, effected a landing at the western extremity, while a part were driven southward. They soon met with the grain *jáwa-wut*, as described by Aji Sâka, and ascertained that they had at last reached their destination.”
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The Prince did not, however, remain long, for on clearing the forests a lingering sickness appeared among his followers, and many died from drinking the water; so he moved south and east in quest of a more salubrious position.
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He found his companions at Matârem, in the centre of the island, and was proclaimed King of the country. He then wrote to inform his father of his success, and obtained a reinforcement of two thousand people.
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“From this period,” continue the chronicles, “Java was known and celebrated as a kingdom; an extensive commerce was carried on with Gujerat and other countries, and the Bay of Matârem was filled with adventurers from all parts.
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“During the sovereignty of the Prince and his two immediate successors, the country advanced in fame and prosperity. The city of Mendang Kumulan, since called Prambanam, increased in size and splendour: artists, particularly in stone and metals, arrived from distant countries, and temples, the ruins of which are still extant, were constructed both at this place and at Bôrôbudûr in Kedu during these periods by artists from India.”¹
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¹ “History of Java,” by Sir Stamford Raffles, vol. ii., p. 82 *et seq.*
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Aji Sâka, from whom the Buddhist rulers of Java claimed descent, was doubtless a Prince of the Sâkas, or Indo-Scythians, who invaded the Græco-Baktrian kingdom of Gandhara between 140 and 130 b.c., and founded a dynasty there. Being expelled from that country by fresh hordes of invaders, the Sâkas entered India and founded a kingdom in the peninsula of Kâthiâwâr which gradually extended over a great part of the adjacent country.
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These facts explain clearly the affinities of the art of Bôrôbudûr and Prambanam with the art of India. The Sâkas, in their migration to India, had passed through the Gandhara country, and their empire in India embraced, or was contiguous to, the great art-centres of Elephanta, Ellora, and Ajanta.
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The colonisation of Java was probably a sequence of the final collapse of the Sâka power in India at the beginning of the fifth century, when the Sâka kingdom of Sarâshtra, or Kâthiâwâr, was conquered by Chandragupta II.¹ After that Brahmanism supplanted Buddhism as the principal state religion in India. The Buddhist art-traditions went with the Sâka immigrants into Java, where they reached their highest expression in the magnificent sculptures of Bôrôbudûr. In India they still continued to flourish under the patronage of Hindu rulers.
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¹ See Vincent Smith's "Early History of India," pp. 186, 187.
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The building of the splendid shrine of Bôrôbudûr, the most magnificent monument of Buddhist art in the whole of Asia, is ascribed to *circa* A.D. 750 to 800, but the decoration of it must have spread over several centuries. It was not in fact entirely completed before the Buddhist faith in Java was superseded by orthodox Brahmanism as the state religion, about the tenth century.
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The plan and detailed description of the building are given in Dr. Leeman's great work on Bôrôbudûr, and in Fergusson's "History of Indian Architecture," but the chief glory of Bôrôbudûr, the five sculptured galleries, or pilgrims' procession paths, surrounding the different stories of the shrine, have never been adequately described or illustrated; Dr. Leeman's lithographed drawings, like most of the illustrations relating to Indian archæology, being quite useless for artistic purposes.
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The whole of the great building, from the basement to the seventh story, was adorned with a series of wonderful sculptures and bas-reliefs, extending in the aggregate for a length of nearly three miles, and expounding in ordered sequence the history, mythology and philosophy of the Buddhist faith. For the devout Buddhist pilgrims who paced these sculptured galleries they were illustrated scriptures, which even the most ignorant could read, telling in living words the life-story and message of the Master. We have discussed already the Indian idealised type of Divinity, which is represented on the monument in countless images of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas in high and low relief, sculptured in panels round the basement and placed in niches above the different galleries. We are now only concerned with the reliefs along the procession paths which exhibit the Indian sculptor’s highest achievements in the treatment of scenes of real, or quasi-real, life. Fortunately, though some have suffered by exposure to the weather, or from shocks of earthquake, they have escaped the ruthless vandalism to which nearly all works of art in India have been subject.
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These reliefs give one hundred and twenty scenes from the life of Buddha, and a similar number from the *jâtakas*—the legends of his previous births. The execution of such a vast work naturally occupied many generations, and obviously they belong to different periods and indicate many different degrees of artistic perfection. The six reproductions given in Plates XXXIII. to XXXVIII. will, however, show the extraordinary beauty of the best of them. They are from a splendid set of photographs made in 1872 for the Batavian Society of Arts and Sciences by Mr. J. van Kinsbergen.
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The study of these sculptures should be approached, not with the stale copy-book rules with which the average educated European often tries to prove the inferiority of Indian art and his own superior discernment, but with an appreciation of the purpose for which they were intended, and an honest endeavour to comprehend, as Taine would say, the soul of the people to whom they were addressed.
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To compare them with the Panathenaic frieze of the Parthenon would serve no useful purpose, though as artistic achievements of the highest class the best Bôrôbudûr sculptures would not suffer by the comparison. There is as little kinship between the academic refinement of the Parthenon sculptures and this supremely devout and spontaneous art as there is between Indian and Hellenic religious thought. They are much more closely allied in feeling and expression to the sculptures of Donatello and those of the best Italian masters of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
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A very near parallel may be found in the celebrated bronze doors of the Baptistery of Florence by Lorenzo Ghiberti, one of the great masterpieces of Italian art of which Michelangelo is reported to have said that they were “fit to be the gates of Paradise.” In these gates a number of Biblical scenes are treated in a series of relief panels with similar accessories to those used by the Bôrôbudûr sculptors, *i.e.* the figures are accompanied by representations of temples, houses, trees, clouds, water, and landscape subjects.
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The Italian master has achieved a technical triumph which won for him the rapturous applause of the *virtuosi* of his day, yet by the use of perspective and an excessive number of planes of relief, in the attempt to produce the illusion of pictorial effects, he has sacrificed breadth and dignity and overstepped the limitations of the plastic art. In spite of its extraordinary technical qualities the main impression given by Ghiberti’s masterpiece is that the artist was more concerned in exhibiting his skill to his fellow-citizens than in producing the most perfect and reverent rendering of the sacred subject.
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The Bôrôbudûr sculptors, with much deeper reverence and less self-consciousness, show conclusively that art is greater than artifice. The very simplicity and unaffected *naïveté* of their style are much more impressive and convincing than the elaborate efforts of the Italian, who with all his wonderful technique is far behind in imagination and artistic feeling. Especially in the magnificent conventionalism of the accessories—the trees, buildings, ships, etc.—does the art of Bôrôbudûr rise above the art of Ghiberti.
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The great charm of the Bôrôbudûr sculptures lies in their absolute truth of expression, a truthfulness which is the more conspicuous because the artists have not tied themselves to the petty rules and regulations on which the modern *dilettante* critic so often bases his judgment of works of art. What modern Academician would dare to disregard the relative proportion between human figures and the accessory trees, houses, temples, elephants, oxen, and carts as these men have done—not because they did not *know*, but because they felt the story must be told in that way? And yet the disproportion does not jar, it only contributes marvellously to the strength of the story-telling and to the richness of the decorative effect.
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The artists who conceived these sculptures were not aiming at the applause of their fellow-men, but trying to tell the story of the Master in the way they conceived He had told it, offering their labour and skill as a devout gift to His shrine. Art seems to reach its highest and to go deepest when all that is small and common is excluded, when the effort of the artist is invisible, and when Nature, purified by the God-given powers of man, is, as it were, re-born. The simple life these men led left them in peace to concentrate their whole soul on their work, and kept their minds free and able to listen to the voices of Nature and of their own inspiration—the soul of Nature speaking to the soul of man.
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They loved and reverenced the Buddha with all their heart, and through the directness and strength of this feeling, and because there was nothing to jar upon it in their life and surroundings, they, with the great gifts they had, could show what they felt without feebleness and without faltering. The spiritual power of their art has broken the chains of technical rules, risen above all thought of what critics call right or wrong, and speaks with divinely inspired words straight to the heart of the listener. In this heaven-born quality of inspiration European art has rarely equalled, and never excelled, the art of Bôrôbudûr.
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Just as we have seen in the Indian ideal type, the smaller anatomical details of the figures are suppressed, but the real spark of life—the essence of feeling—is wonderfully manifested. Every group and every figure are absolutely true and sincere in expression of face, gesture, and pose of body; and the actions which link the various groups and single figures together are strongly and simply told, without effort or striving for effect—it was so, because so it could only be!
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What wonderful descriptive power and truth of feeling there are in the lower panel of Plate XXXIII., where the dancer is performing before a prince, no doubt an incident in the early life of Buddha, when he was known as the Prince Siddhartha! How absorbed are the musicians in their accompaniment of the dance! They are only filled with the thought of doing their very best, of bringing from their instruments the sweetest and most harmonious sounds which might give pleasure to their lord. Most of the musicians have downcast eyes, one only—the farthest away—dares lift up her eyes to the throne.
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The dancing figure, full of grace and dignity, revels in the rhythm of the dance. It is impossible to study it and not to see that here again reverence and the desire to please fill the performer. The artist has expressed this with the simple power of what he felt himself, showing what he surely would have tried to do had he been the performer. The Prince seated on the throne with his wife at his side is a noble, pensive figure. He is pleased with the music and the dance, but his thoughts are far, far away. This again is a perfectly true note. The instinct which led the artist to express just this touches the centre of true feeling.
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The group on the right of the throne, composed with a refined decorative sense, indicates quiet, modest beings, both men and beasts, wholly absorbed in the music.
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In the panel above this, King Suddhodhana, the father of Prince Siddhartha, is distributing presents to *bhiksus*—devotees who have consecrated themselves to a religious life. Here again it is delightful to feel the warmth with which the artist has expressed the goodwill with which the presents are given. The disciples of the holy man on the left, loaded with good things from the King's hands, bring the gifts to their master with the best of good feelings. The first figure, who has two large fruits in his hands, offers them tenderly and lovingly. We know at once that they are the very best fruits that could possibly be gathered. These adoring disciples are filled with desire to refresh the body of the saint, and in their movements there is a silent prayer that he will take care of himself for their sakes. But the thought for his physical welfare does not for a moment interfere with the depth of their reverence for him.
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The upper panels of Plates XXXIV. and XXXVI. show us Prince Siddhartha again, before the heavenly dignity of Buddhahood had transfigured him. Although the artist, in his treatment of the figure, has quite unconsciously been influenced by the Indian traditions of the divine ideal, he has known quite well to express with perfect clearness that this is only the man, although the Chosen One. The difference between him here and where he is represented as the Buddha—the Enlightened—is quite obvious, even without the distinction made by the nimbus round his head.
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The artist has expressed it quite simply and forcibly, both by the action of the principal figure and by the atmosphere he has created round him. The followers of the Prince in Plate XXXVI. behave with perfect respect to their master, but there is none of the adoring reverence which Indian artists know how to express so wonderfully. The attitude of the Prince himself is free and noble, but quite without the touch of divine dignity.
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The other panel (Plate XXXIV.) shows him when he was competing with other Sâkya lords, his cousins, at feats-of-arms for the hand of the fair Yasôdhara. The scene is described by Sir Edwin Arnold in "The Light of Asia":
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Then Nanda challenged for the arrow-test
And set a brazen drum six gows away,
Ardjuna six and Devadatta eight;
But Prince Siddhartha bade them set his drum
Ten gows from off the line, until it seemed
A cowry-shell for target. Then they loosed
And Nanda pierced his drum, Ardjuna his,
And Devadatta drove a well-aimed shaft
Through both sides of his mark, so that the crowd
Marvelled and cried; and sweet Yasôdhara
Dropped the gold sari o'er her fearful eyes,
Lest she should see her Prince's arrow fail.
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The bow first offered him Siddhartha broke in testing it, and then called for a bow "more fit for Sâkya lords to use,"—the famous bow of Sinhahânu, kept in the temple, which no man yet had been able to draw:
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Twice Siddhartha tried
Its strength across his knee, then spake—"Shoot now
With this, my cousins!" but they could not bring
The stubborn arms a hair's breadth nigher use;
Then the Prince, lightly leaning, bent the bow.
. . . . .
Then lifting fair a shaft, he drew and loosed,
And the keen arrow clave the sky and drave
Right through that farthest drum, nor stayed its flight,
But skimmed the plain beyond, past reach of eye.
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The artist has not here attempted to make a set composition, with the sole object of pleasing the eye; nor has he tried to indicate any supernatural quality in the Prince’s strength. He has just followed the instinct of his genius and shown us the incident as it might have occurred in the real Court life of his time. The simplicity and unconventionality with which the tale is told gives it its charm, and the student of the present day who reads these panels can feel the strength of the artist’s power, just as the myriads of devout pilgrims who reverently paced the procession paths of Bôrôbudûr must have felt it in the centuries that are gone.
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The upper panel in the next plate, XXXV., tells the story of the conversion of the Javanese to Buddhism in the beautiful legend that Buddha himself came over the sea, floating on a lotus-flower, to give his divine message to the people. Here we have no longer the man with human desires and aims, but the Buddha in the full glory of his divinity. He has passed through all the phases of this worldly life, and through all the sufferings. He is neither the royal Prince nor the ascetic wasted and worn; all his struggles and trials are finished now, through all those gates he has passed. Now he is the noble, purified Soul, in a noble body filled with heavenly bliss.
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Every creature that comes near is conscious of it. The spirits of the upper air, the Vidyâdharas and Siddhas, whose voices the pilgrims heard so The provided image is a blank page containing no text, headings, figures, or page furniture.
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often in their wanderings, flock round him, joyously strewing his path with flowers, feeling and rejoicing in the power of purity which goes out from him. The Nâgas, the water-sprites, raise their heads to do him homage, and the princes of the earth, overwhelmed by the strength of his divine dignity, prostrate themselves at his feet in silent adoration.
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The doe from the forest knows at once that her King and Protector has come, He who in His boundless love once offered His life for hers. She whispers the joyful tidings to her little one, which turns its head with curiosity to look upon Him whom all Nature worships.
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Note how finely the artist has shown the difference in the feelings of the spirits of the air, who have shaken off the grosser attachments of the earth, and those of the human beings still chained to the desires and passions of this life. Man is all humility, prostrating himself on bended knees, nor daring to lift his head in the presence of such divine purity. The spirits are only filled with free and careless joy. They hasten on all sides bringing the symbols of His divinity and the offerings due to the Blessed One.
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The subject of the panel below, with the splendid relief of a ship in full sail, seems to be connected with the history of the colonisation of Java by Indians, which has been already narrated.¹ The ship, magnificent in design and movement, is a masterpiece in itself. It tells more plainly than words the perils which the Prince of Gujerat and his companions encountered on the long and difficult voyage from the west coast of India. But these are over now. The sailors are hastening to furl the sails and bring the ship to anchor.
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¹ See pp. 111, 112.
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The contrast between the perils of the deep and the peaceful security of the haven they have now reached is drawn with the same extraordinary strength and truth of feeling which characterise all these reliefs. The Prince, with his wife and child, have already landed, and the simple and charming group on the left shows their meeting with the inhabitants. They are kneeling before the Prince and receiving thankfully the presents which he brings. On the roof of the native house two doves sit billing and cooing.
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The lower panel of the next illustration, Plate XXXVI., is one of the most beautiful and perfectly preserved of the whole series. We think at once of Tanagra. Yes, but the pretty domestic art of Tanagra never produced anything so great as this. It is Tanagra art, without its coquetry, chastened and strengthened by a profound religious sentiment. The scene is one which may be witnessed every day in any Indian village, but the inspiration of the art which created such a masterpiece lives no longer.
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It is only a group of Indian women drawing water from the village tank, under the shade of the sacred tree next to the village temple. One The page appears to be blank.
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of them bending over the lotus-covered water is just filling her vessel, watching it intently as she draws it up with her left hand, while her right is raised to grasp it when it comes within reach.
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Some with their vessels filled and balanced truly on their heads are already moving off with a queenly step, and wend their way towards the village shrine. Others are approaching the water with their empty vessels. And one, apart from the rest, has placed her vessel on the ground, and, leaving her household cares awhile, kneels at the feet of the Master, listening with rapt attention to words full of tenderness and divine compassion such as man never spake before.
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How marvellously the whole scene lives and moves, and what an atmosphere of purity, freshness, and womanly grace breathes through it all! We seem to feel the brightness of the Indian morning and hear the twittering of the birds as they fly from tree to tree and hover round the temple roof. Every figure is full of unconscious charm and dignity; every movement tells, but there is no posing for effect, no effort of the artist to show his cleverness. The simplicity of the treatment is as wonderful as its strength. Where Ghiberti or any modern European sculptor would use half a dozen planes of relief, the Indian artist is content with one or two, and tells his story with much greater vividness and truthful feeling.
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And over all there is an undefinable sense of reverent adoration for the beauty of Nature and for the greatness of the divine wisdom which created it. This is the leading *motif* in the music of all these panels. It is repeated again and again in different keys and in different chords, every note and every phrase joining to make one great harmonious sequence of praise and thankfulness.
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The two panels in the next illustration show the same superlative sense of beauty and power of grouping figures together to express varying feeling and emotions. The upper one represents Mâya, the mother of Buddha, seated on her car of state and hastening to the Lumbini Garden, where, as she has learnt in a dream, her son who was to be the salvation of the world, should be born. The male attendants surround the car in zealous care of their royal mistress, clearing the path in front of any untoward or unseemly thing, and holding the insignia of royalty proudly over her, while the ladies in her train follow behind in lively converse on the coming event. The feelings of queenly and womanly dignity in Mâya and the eager expectancy in the throng of her attendants, are perfectly given.
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In the panel below either Mâya or the wife of Prince Siddhartha is engaged in paying her devotions at the temple. The grouping and the various attitudes of her attendants waiting outside the temple are as full of intense and subtle sentiment as any of the series. In none of these scenes is there any set form or mannerism in the grouping, such as we often observe in Ghiberti's The provided image is a blank page containing no printed text or headings to transcribe.
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art and in the composition of many of the best Italian masters. These Bôrôbudûr sculptors have known how to convey the essence of truth as it is found in Nature without obtruding their own personality or relying on any of the common tricks of their craft. Their art, used only in the service of truth and religion, has made their hands the obedient tools of a heaven-sent inspiration; and their unique power of realising this, with a depth and sincerity unsurpassed in the art of any land, or in any epoch, gives them a right to rank among the greatest of the symbolists in the whole history of art.
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The last of the illustrations I have selected to show the art of Bôrôbudûr is one of a series which represents scenes in the Tusitâ heavens, where, according to the Mahâyâna doctrine, all Bodhisattvas are born before they appear in the world, and where Maitreya, the coming Buddha, now lives.
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Here also the Buddha, Gautama, having finished his incarnations on earth and accomplished his Nirvana, is said to have gone to teach and convert his mother Mâya,¹ who died a week after his birth. This is the scene represented in the panel. Buddha, enthroned in all the glory of his divinity under a splendid canopy, is preaching the law to Mâya, who sits in happy ecstasy listening to the inspired words of her son.
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¹ Grünwedel, "Buddhist Art in India," p. 132.
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The two symbolic trees, magnificently conventionalised, the doves and sacred birds which hover overhead, contribute greatly to the richness of the decorative effect, but the rare genius of the artist is most conspicuous in the delightful group of Mâya's five attendants, leaning forward as far as respect for their royal mistress will permit, and straining their ears so that no word of the Divine Truth may escape them.
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The fact that these marvellous sculptures have hitherto attracted so little attention goes far to show that the reputation of works of art in Europe depends more upon the label attached to them by the pedantic tradition of our so-called classical education than upon their intrinsic merit.
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An amusing incident illustrating the extreme importance of labels in the minds of European art-experts occurred recently. A bronze statuette attributed to an Italian master of the sixteenth century was purchased by one of the great European art museums. It was duly labelled, discussed, and admired as a great work of art, until one fine day a living sculptor walked into the museum and claimed it as his own work. When the truth of his claim was established, the consternation of the museum authorities was great. The poor innocent statuette, which under the name attributed to it was bought for some thousands of pounds, was not worth twenty as the work of a living artist: it was promptly hustled into a store-room as unfit for public view. To the lay mind it must seem incomprehensible This page is blank and contains no printed text to transcribe.
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why a copy or adaptation of Greek or Græco-Roman work by an Italian of the sixteenth century should be invaluable for the art-education of the people, when a similar thing done equally well by Brown or Robinson in the twentieth century is considered worthless.
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But it can hardly be doubted that had these Bôrôbudûr sculptures only been labelled "Greek," "Roman," or "Italian," the volumes of criticism and commentaries upon them would have filled many libraries; casts of them would be found in every European art-school and museum; tourists would have flocked to inscribe their names upon them or chip off fragments as souvenirs; art-dealers and American millionaires would have jostled one another in their eagerness to possess them. But as they are only Indo-Javanese and memorials of Asiatic culture, they are as works of art totally unappreciated, though well known to oriental archæologists; and Bôrôbudûr remains an obscure and neglected ruin, the name of which is hardly mentioned either in Europe or in Asia. I believe there does not even yet exist a complete photographic record of the sculptures, the series taken by Mr. Van Kinsbergen in 1872, of which only six sets were printed and buried in the libraries of six learned societies, representing only a small part of them.
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And while there is no living artist within the boundaries of Europe who can produce anything, either in painting or in sculpture, to be placed side by side with these wonderful reliefs, and while the living traditions of this great art still linger in several parts of India, we establish schools to teach Indians painting and sculpture as they are taught in Europe, send out sculptors to decorate Indian buildings, and flatter ourselves that by the annual fine art exhibitions which amuse Anglo-Indian *dilettanti* we are helping to elevate the taste of the Indian public!
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Europe of the present day has in art far more to learn from India than to teach. Religious art in Europe is altogether lost; it perished in our so-called Renaissance. In India the true spirit of it still lives.
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The study of these sculptures of Bôrôbudûr is a liberal art-education in itself. Is it too much to hope, when at some future time a reasonable and intelligent artistic policy is established in India, both as regards school of art work and general education, that reproductions of these classics of Indian art¹ may be put before Indian students instead of European casts from "the antique"; and that the libraries of every college and high school may have illustrations of them, to teach coming generations of Indians that they too have an art for which they should feel proud and reverently thankful, despised and neglected though it may be in the ignorance and folly of the present one?
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¹ Casts of some of the finest have been taken lately by the Dutch Government, and can be obtained from the Colonial Museum, Haarlem.
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Quite apart from its purely artistic aspects there is in an art like this an ethical value which modern India seems unable to understand and utilise. It is just in this ethical principle that modern education on classical lines misconstrues the spirit of classical culture and art. Every national art is an expression of national character, and when we compare the devout and reverent outlook upon Nature shown in these Bôrôbudûr sculptures with the utter vulgarity of modern India, as we have made it, it is only too evident that in one respect our education falls immeasurably behind that of Greece and of ancient India, in the neglect of Plato’s injunction “to use the beauties of earth as steps along which we mount upwards.”
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India, vulgarised by modern education and by the sordid ideals of modern commercialism, will never compensate humanity for India with its knowledge of beauty—the perfect law of Nature, in which science and art are one.