Monumental Java by J. F. Scheltema

Author:J. F. Scheltema
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Monuments -- Indonesia -- Java, Indonesia -- Antiquities, Java (Indonesia) -- Antiquities
Published: 2013-03-23T16:00:00+00:00

Decoration

CHAPTER VII

BUDDHIST JAVA

Was ist das Heiligste? Das was heut’ und ewig die Geister

Tief und tiefer gefühlt, immer nur einiger macht.[107]

Wolfgang von Goethe, Vier Jahreszeiten (Herbst).

Although the theory of Gautama the Sugata’s life-story being only a repolished solar myth has broken down, its vital element of emancipation from Brahmanic bonds is certainly much older than Buddhism and the traditional Buddha but an incarnation of ideas long germinating and attaining fruition in his teachings, precisely as happened with other religious reformers who came and went before and after. The thirty-three gods of the three worlds, “eleven in heaven, eleven on earth and eleven dwelling in glory in mid-air,” with their three supreme shining ones, Brahma, Vishnu and Siva, creating, maintaining, destroying and creating anew, began to pall on the human trimoorti of brain, heart and bodily wants; the moral dispensation on which the social edifice was founded, began to need revision. Neither did the orthodox, at first, refuse admittance to the spirit of emendation. At the sangharama[108] of Nalanda the Vedas were taught together with the Buddhist doctrine according to the tenets of the Greater and the Lesser Vehicle à choix. The Buddha had to be accepted and was accepted equally by eastern tolerance and western necessity; while ranking as a divine teacher among his followers in the legendary development of his precepts, he received honour as an incarnation of Vishnu among the Hindus, says Sir William W. Hunter,[109] and as a Saint of the Christian Church, with a day assigned to him in both the Greek and Roman calendars. Truly, the Hindus regarded him as the ninth and hitherto last incarnation of Vishnu, the Lying Spirit let loose to deceive man until the tenth and final descent of the god, on the white horse, with a flaming sword like a comet in his hand, for the destruction of the wicked and the renovation of the world, but he was reckoned with and acknowledged in their mythology, and the remarkable conformity between Prince Sarvarthasiddha’s lineage, adventures and achievements, and those of the seventh avatar of the Hindu deity in the Ramayana are certainly more than accidental. The law of mercy to all, preached by the blissful Bhagavat, the Buddha, the Saviour, affected the Brahman creed profoundly; so profoundly in its deductions, that apprehensive priests resolved to extirpate Buddhist heresy. But since religious persecution always defeats its purpose, Buddhism throve with oppression and holds fully its own against the two other great religions of the present day, al-Islām and Christianity.

To define the Buddhism which, parallel and entwined with Hinduïsm, preceded the Muhammadanism of Java, is no easy matter, if it is possible at all. For the sake of convenience Javanese Buddhism may be classified as mahayanistic, conformable to the northern canon or doctrine of the Greater Vehicle, versus hinayanistic, i.e. conformable to the southern canon or the doctrine of the Lesser Vehicle. But the geographical division proposed by Burnouf, hardly meets the case of our more advanced knowledge, which points rather to chronological distinctions.

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