  Leaving the native village of Mendut 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 tyan?i Pawon before our having turned into the broad kenari-avenue which leads through the native village of BÅrÅ to the hill of the BÅrÅbudur. Some years ago this tyan?i 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 tyan?i 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 tyan?i 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 tyan?is 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 tyan?i SÉvu. Other ones now adorn the premises of the residences of leaseholders living in these environs, for instance, at the tyan?i 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 Garu?a-Naga ornament, but 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 tyan?i Mendut 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 tyan?is, 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 tyan?is SÉvu and Parambanan they also did not follow this rule. |
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