After careful scrutiny of the miniature temple which suggests so many
interpretations of symbolic imagery, we return to the little presbytery
to hear of the subsiding river, and the good priest, announcing that
the raft can now be safely negotiated, accompanies us to the tottering
structure, a straw matting laid over three crazy boats punted across
the turbulent stream. A half-hour's stroll beneath the arching boughs
of a kanari avenue, ends at a picturesque Rest House, facing the
temple-crowned hill. Surely we have reached the peace and silence of
Nirvana at last! and the exquisite beauty of the surrounding landscape,
mountain and forest, park-like valley and winding glen, transfigured in
the deepening gold of sunset, stamps an ineffaceable impression of
Boro-Boedoer in that mystic gallery of imagination and memory which
retains earth's fairest scenes as eternal possessions of mind and soul.
A shadowy garden, fragrant and dim, stretches up to the pyramidal pile
which covers the hill. A frangipanni grove scents the air, with
gold-starred blossoms gleaming whitely amid the silvery green of
lanceolated leaves, and a shaft of ruby light striking the stone
Buddhas which guard the portico, emphasises the inscrutable smile of
the tranquil faces. Like all stupendous monuments of Art or Nature,
Boro-Boedoer at first sight seems a disappointment, simply because the
mind fails to grasp the immensity of the noblest Temple ever dedicated
to the gentle Sage whose renunciation typified the greater Sacrifice
offered by the Saviour of the World. Who that reads the story of Sakya
Munyi can doubt that through the Prince who gave up kingdom, throne,
and earthly ties for the sake of downtrodden humanity, a prophetic
gleam of heavenly light pierced the darkness of the future, and pointed
to the distant Cross? Twenty-five centuries have rolled away since
Prince Siddartha closed his unique career, and twelve centuries later
the wondrous sanctuary of Boro-Boedoer was erected in honour of the
creed eternally dear to the heart of the mystic East. The eight stately
terraces which climb and encircle the sacred hill rise from a spacious
pavement of blackened stone, and the walled processional paths display
a superb series of sculptured reliefs, which would measure three miles
in length if placed side by side. The grey and black ruins, with their
rich incrustations of sacred and historic scenes, remain in such
splendid preservation that fancy easily