THE EUIXS OP EORO BUDUR IN JAVA. 211 



The written traditions, Babads, or genealogical chronicles, which 

 ■exist, are of little more value. Mr. Brumund says of them " the 

 Javanese like the other nations of India offer us fictions for history 

 and the efforts of their ill-regulated imagination for facts." There 

 is, in truth, an almost total absence or! trustworthy informa- 

 tion upon the subject. And it is to internal evidence we must 

 go, to the testimony of the building itself, its form and its decora- 

 tion, in order to obtain the light we need respecting the religion of 

 which it was the expression, and the purpose it was intended to 

 serve. 



The original germinal idea of a Buddhist temple was a mound 

 to contain a precious casket in which some relic of the Buddha was 

 enclosed. After Sakya-Mouni was dead his body was burned, and 

 the ashes of the Master were divided into eight parts, which were 

 distributed among an equal number of the towns or persons who 

 could make good their claim to possess such an inestimable trea- 

 sure. But 150 years later Asoka, King of the powerful Buddhist 

 kingdom of Maghadu, caused seven of the eight receptacles to be 

 opened and made a new division. The sacred relics were then 

 deposited in 8,400 caskets, and each casket was buried in a species 

 of mound called a Stupa or Tupa. The Tupa then became, in every 

 place to which one of the caskets found its way, the nucleus of the 

 Buddhist temple. Dr. Leemaxs shews that in every country in 

 which the sacred edifices of the Buddhists are found this may be 

 seen to be the case. The Tupa was much modified, and in many 

 different ways, among the various nations who learned to venerate 

 the Buddha and erect buildings to his honour, but the simple 

 original idea is found everywhere in some form or another. The 

 mound has been built of stone or brick, it has become in one case a 

 pyramid, in another a cupola; the cupola has been exalted on a 

 cylindrical base, it has been divided into terraces and variously 

 decorated, but the mound which contain-, or is supposed to contain, 

 the reliquary is always represented. 



The outward form then of Boro Budur, as described in the 

 passage of Sir Stamford Raffles which I have read, and as de- 

 picted in the Plate JN"o. I., * is entirely in accord with this ruling 



* A photograph of this engraving is inserted at the beginning of this paper. I take this 

 opportunity of stating that this and the other photographs of these engravings have been 

 executed by the Government Photographer at Singapore under the direction of the Hon'ble 

 Major McNaih, it. a., c.ir.G., Colonial Engineer, Straits Settlements. 



