The art and architecture of India - Buddhist, Hindu, Jain (Art Ebook)

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392. Barabudur, upper terraces and terminal steoa <C£^--'
dhism in Japan - the mand^rfas of the material
and spiritual world, each presided over by a
form of Mahavairooana the creator.
In other
words, the first five galleries express the mandala
of the material world, and the mandala of
the upper terraces is the diagram of the spiritual
world. Stating the solution of this problem in
the briefest possible terms, the latter symbolize
the Dharmakaya - 'Law Body' or Logos - of
Vairocana, whereas the Buddhas of "the fifth
terrace stand for the Rupakaya or form body,
the manifested shape of the same supreme Buddha,
like the Mahavairocana of the Kongokai
mandara in contrast with the Vairocana of the
Taizokai mandara.
Why are there seventy-two Buddhas in
stupas ? Possibly this is a selection of the famous
mystic number and represents the building of
the quality of time into the monument. Every
seventy-two years, as was well known to the
ancients, marked a change of one degree in the
precession of the equinoxes, and so the presence
of seventy-two Buddhas - the number present
in all the reckonings of the great cycles - would
be a plastic-architectural representation of the
existence of the Buddha Law throughout all
the past and future kalpas ofTime. It is probably
no accident that the number seventy-two corresponds
to the total of the principal deities in
the Kongokai mandara.
And what of the final riddle - the Buddha of
the chief stupa? There has been a great deal of
controversy about the Buddha actually found
in the ruins of the main stupa: whether it is
the original image intended for this place or not
why it is in such an unfinished condition; why
this image, which seems to represent Aksobhya,
is placed in the holy of holies above Vairocana.
What would really be more to the point is to ask
oneself what sort of image might appropriately