Page 69 (part 11)

One of the best of these colossal images is now in the British Museum. The images at Ronororaka -- the only ones now found erect -- are four in number, three deeply sunk in the soil, and one resting on the back of its head like the head of a man asleep. Their types, though all are long-headed, are different; and they are evidently meant for portraits, as the noses, the mouths and chins differ greatly in form, their head-dress, moreover -- a kind of flat cap with a back piece attached to it to cover the back portion of the head --showing that the originals were no savages of the stone period. Verily the question may be asked -- "Who made them?" -- but it is not archaeology nor yet geology that is likely to answer, though the latter recognizes in the Island a portion of a submerged continent. But who cut the Bamian, still more colossal, statues, the tallest and the most gigantic in the whole world, for Bartholdi's "Statue of Liberty" (now at New York) is a dwarf when compared with the largest of the five images. Burnes, and several learned Jesuits who have visited the place, speak of a mountain " all honeycombed with gigantic cells, " with two immense giants cut in the same rock. They are referred to as the modern Miaotse ( vide supra, quotation from Shoo-King ) the last surviving witnesses of the Miaotse who had "troubled the earth"; the Jesuits are right, and the Archaeologists, who see Buddhas in the largest of these statues, are mistaken. For all those numberless gigantic ruins discovered one after the other in our day, all those immense avenues of colossal ruins that cross North America along and beyond the Rocky Mountains, are the work of the Cyclopes, the true and actual Giants of old. "Masses of enormous human bones" were found "in America, near Misorte," a celebrated modern traveller tells us, precisely on the spot which local tradition points out as the landing [[Vol. 2, Page]] 338 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. spot of those giants who overran America when it had hardly arisen from the waters (See " De La Vega, " Vol. ix., ch. ix.).* Central Asian traditions say the same of the Bamian statues. What are they, and what is the place where they have stood for countless ages, defying the cataclysms around them, and even the hand of man, as in the instance of the hordes of Timoor and the Vandal-warriors of Nadir-Shah? Bamian is a small, miserable, half-ruined town in Central Asia, half-way between Cabul and Balkh, at the foot of Kobhibaba, a huge mountain of the Paropamisian (or Hindu-Kush) chain, some 8,500 feet above the level of the sea. In days of old, Bamian was a portion of the ancient city of Djooljool, ruined and destroyed to the last stone by Tchengis-Khan in the XIII th century. The whole valley is hemmed in by colossal rocks, which are full of partially natural and partially artificial caves and grottoes, once the dwellings of Buddhist monks who had established in them their viharas. Such viharas are to be met with in profusion, to this day, in the rock-cut temples of India and the valleys of Jellalabad. It is at the entrance of some of these that five enormous statues, of what is regarded as Buddha, have been discovered or rather rediscovered in our century, as the famous Chinese traveller, Hiouen-Thsang, speaks of, and saw them, when he visited Bamian in the VII th century. When it is maintained that no larger statues exist on the whole globe, the fact is easily proven on the evidence of all the travellers who have examined them and taken their measurements. Thus, the largest is 173 feet high, or seventy feet higher than the "Statue of Liberty" now at New York, as the latter is only 105 feet or 34 metres high. The famous Colossus of Rhodes itself, between whose limbs passed easily the largest vessels of those days, measured only 120 to 130 feet in height. The second statue, cut out in the rock like the first one, is only 120 feet (15 feet taller than the said "Liberty").** The third statue is only 60 feet high -- the two others still smaller, the last one being only a little larger than the average tall man of our present race. The first and largest of the Colossi represents a man draped in a kind of toga ; M. de Nadeylac thinks (See infra ) that the general appearance of the figure, the lines of the head, the drapery, and especially the large hanging ears, point out undeniably that Buddha was meant to be represented. But the above proves nothing. Notwithstanding the fact [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * See also " Pneumatologie des Esprits " Vol. III., p. 55, de Mirville. ** The first and second have, in common with Bartholdi's Statue, an entrance at the foot, leading by a winding staircase cut in the rock up into the heads of the statues. The eminent French archeologist and anthropologist, the Marquis de Nadeylac, justly remarks in his work that there never was in ancient or in modern times a sculptured human figure more colossal than the first of the two. [[Vol. 2, Page]] 339 THE ANTEDILUVIAN BUDDHAS. that most of the now existing figures of Buddha, represented in the posture of Samadhi, have large drooping ears, this is a later innovation and an afterthought. The primitive idea was due to esoteric allegory. The unnaturally large ears symbolize the omniscience of wisdom, and were meant as a reminder of the power of Him who knows and hears all, and whose benevolent love and attention for all creatures nothing can escape. "The merciful Lord, our Master, hears the cry of agony of the smallest of the small, beyond vale and mountain, and hastens to its deliverance": --says a Stanza. Gautama Buddha was an Aryan Hindu, and an approach to such ears is found only among the Mongolian Burmese and Siamese, who, as in Cochin, distort them artificially. The Buddhist monks, who turned the grottos of the Miaotse into Viharas and cells, came into Central Asia about or in the first century of the Christian era. Therefore Hiouen Thsang, speaking of the colossal statue, says that "the shining of the gold ornamentation that overlaid the statue" in his day "dazzled one's eyes," but of such gilding there remains not a vestige in modern times. The very drapery, in contrast to the figure itself, cut out in the standing rock, is made of plaster and modelled over the stone image.