Page:A Handbook of Indian Art.djvu/287

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JAVA SCULPTURE
161

conception of Avalokitēshvara, or Padmapāni, the Bodhisattva of divine love and pity, seated on his lotus throne, the up and down turned petals of which are symbols of the heavenly and earthly spheres. He is in the pose of "royal ease," i.e., with the right leg completely released from the meditative position. His right hand, with the palm turned upwards, makes the gesture of charity (vara-mudrā), the left expounds a point of the Law. The similarity between the royal insignia worn on the body, the jewelled collar, shoulder-band, and girdle, and those on the Sānchī torso (Pl. LVI, a), will be noticed. Borobudūr was built about the second half of the ninth century a.d., and this sculpture may be a century or two later. The graceful standing figure b of the same plate belongs to the temple of Chandi Sewa at Prambānam, which is supposed to have been built about the end of the eleventh century. A cast of it is in the Trocadéro in Paris.

The two beautiful heads illustrated in Pl. LVIII are also from Java. The Buddha type, Fig. A, is now in the Ethnological Museum at Leyden. The Bodhisattva, Fig. B, is in the Glyptotek at Copenhagen.