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X. Two Notes on Javanese Archæology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

Extract

The frontispiece plate of Mr. H. G. Rawlinson's recent work, Intercourse between India and the Western-World (Cambridge, 1916), gives a very fine reproduction of two bas-reliefs, placed one above the other, from the famous Javanese stūpa of Boro-budur. The most conspicuous object shown in the lower panel is a sailing vessel, which the unknown artist has rendered with remarkable skill and vigour, whilst the remaining portion of it exhibits some six men (apparently belonging to the vessel in question) being hospitably received by another party of people whose quaint-shaped dwelling is visible in the background. The author, evidently with reference to this scene, has felt at liberty to label the illustration “A Hindu Ship arriving at Java”.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1917

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References

page 367 note 1 The book was reviewed by Mr. J. Kennedy in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society for 1916, pp. 847 ff.

page 368 note 1 The third of these six (it will be found on the plate facing p. 48 in Mr. Mookerji's book) represents in reality the same ship which we find on the frontispiece plate. A comparison of the two plates enables us to judge how very inadequate Dr. Leemans' reproductions really are.

page 369 note 1 Pleyte, C. M., Die Buddha-legende in den Skulpturen des Tempels von Boro-budur (Amsterdam, 1901)Google Scholar. The Dutch author, in writing his book, has wisely chosen a language more generally understood than his native tongue. It is, indeed, much to be deplored that so many excellent studies devoted by Dutch scholars to the antiquities of Java are, owing to their being written in the Dutch language, inaccessible to the great majority of Indologists outside Holland.

page 369 note 2 In this upper panel Mr. Havell (op. cit., p. 122) wishes us to see “the story of the conversion of the Javanese to Buddhism in the beautiful legend that Buddha himself came over the sea, floating on a lotus-flower, to give his divine message to the people”.

page 370 note 1 Foucher, A., “Notes d'archéologie bouddhique. Le Stūpa de Borobudur”Google Scholar: BÉFEO., tome ix, pp. 1 sqq., 1909.

page 372 note 1 A view of this temple is given in Fergusson, James's History of Indian and Eastern Architecture, rev. ed. (London, 1910), vol. ii, pi. xlixGoogle Scholar. As the temples on the Diëng plateau must have been Brahmanical, the statement that the heads in the sunken niches of the spire are Buddha heads cannot be maintained.

page 373 note 1 “The erection of the pillar [of Navandgaṛh],” Sir Alexander Cunningham says, “is ascribed to Raja Bhīm Māri, one of the five Pāndava brothers, to whom most of the pillars in India are now ascribed. I could not learn anything regarding the title of Māri” (ASK, vol. i, p. 74).Google Scholar

page 374 note 1 Cf. ASR. for 1910–11, p. 54.

page 375 note 1 Cf. DrVerbeek, R. D. M.'s List of Antiquities of JavaGoogle Scholar, published in the Proceedings of the Batavia Society of Arts and Sciences, vol. xlvi, 1891.