Page:Scidmore--Java the garden of the east.djvu/209

Rh progress of the religion, it took on many features of Jainism, or advancing Brahmanism, Buddha is several times represented as the ninth avatar, or incarnation, of Vishnu, still seated on the lotus cushion, and holding a lotus with one of his four hands. Figure after figure wears the Brahmanic cord, or sacrificial thread, over the left shoulder; and all the royal ones sit in what must have been the pose of high fashion at that time—one knee bent under in tailor fashion, the other bent knee raised and held in a loop of the girdle confining the sarong skirt. There is not a grotesque nor a nude figure in the whole three miles of sculptured scenes, and the costumes are a study in themselves; likewise the elaborate jewels which Maia and her maids and the princely ones wear. The trees and flowers are a sufficient study alone; and on my last morning at Boro Boeder I made the whole round at sunrise, looking specially at the wonderful palms, bamboos, frangipani-, mango-, mangosteen-, breadfruit-, pomegranate-, banana-, and bo-trees—every local form being gracefully conventionalized, and, as Fergusson says, "complicated and refined beyond any examples known in India." It is such special rounds that give one a full idea of what a monumental masterpiece the great Buddhist vihara is, what an epitome of all the arts and civilization of the eighth century those galleries of sculpture hold, and turn one to dreaming of the builders and their times.

No particularly Javanese types of face or figure are represented. All the countenances are Hindu, Hindu-Caucasian, and pure Greek; and none of the objects or accessories depicted with them are those of an un-