Page:Scidmore--Java the garden of the east.djvu/205

Rh ing galleries, or processional paths, between their walls, which are covered on each side with bas-relief sculptures. If placed in single line these bas-reliefs would extend for three miles. The terrace walls hold four hundred and thirty-six niches or alcove chapels, where life-size Buddhas sit serene upon lotus cushions. Staircases ascend in straight lines from each of the four sides, passing under stepped or pointed arches the keystones of which are elaborately carved masks, and rows of sockets in the jambs show where wood or metal doors once swung. Above the square terraces are three circular terraces, where seventy-two latticed dagobas (reliquaries in the shape of the calyx or bud of the lotus) inclose each a seated image, seventy-two more Buddhas sitting in these inner, upper circles of Nirvana, facing a great dagoba, or final cupola, the exact function or purpose of which as key to the whole structure is still the puzzle of archæologists. This final shrine is fifty feet in diameter, and either covered a relic of Buddha, or a central well where the ashes of priests and princes were deposited, or is a form surviving from the tree-temples of the earliest, primitive East when nature-worship prevailed. The English engineers made an opening in the solid exterior, and found an unfinished statue of Buddha on a platform over a deep well-hole; and its head, half buried in debris, still smiles upon one from the deep cavern. M. Freidrich, in "L'Extrême Orient" (1878), states that this top dagoba was opened in the time of the resident Hartman (1835), and that gold ornaments were found; and it was believed that there were several stories or chambers to this well, which reached to