A Visit to Java Part 4

CHAPTER V.

THE HINDU TEMPLES.

The temple remains generally--The connection between Buddha and Brahma--The Boro-Boedoer--Loro-Jonggrang.

Of the temple ruins of Java, considered generally, Mr. Wallace says, "It will take most persons by surprise to learn that they far surpa.s.s those of Central America, perhaps even those of India."[12] Yet it is only recently that these great works have been recovered to the world. A Dutch engineer who was sent to construct a fort at Klaten, in 1797, found that a number of architectural remains existed in the neighbourhood of Brambanan, of which no account had been given. The natives, it appeared, regarded them as the work of some local deity, and, indeed, were in the habit of wors.h.i.+pping one conspicuous statue.

He also found much difficulty in sufficiently clearing the ruins of the overgrowth of vegetation, so as to get an adequate view. Eventually he succeeded in making some rough sketches of them. In the year following the English occupation (1812), Colonel Colin MacKenzie visited Brambanan, and made an accurate survey of the ruins in that neighbourhood, which he sketched and described. At the instance of the Governor, Sir Stamford Raffles, Captain Butler was then sent to make drawings of the buildings, and to report upon them. This was the first methodical exploration of the Hindu ruins in Java; but it was only partial, and related almost exclusively to the Brambanan neighbourhood.

A quarter of a century later, when the discovery of photography had made an exact reproduction of the sculptures possible, the Dutch Government inst.i.tuted an exhaustive survey of the Boro-Boedoer temple. In July, 1845, M. Shaefer was commissioned to execute photographs of the bas-reliefs, but he was only partially successful. Two years later, an engineer, M. F. C. Wilsen, was sent out from Holland, and, after giving satisfactory proofs of his skill, definitely appointed in 1849, by a decree of the Council of Netherlands India, to make drawings of the bas-reliefs and statues of this temple. He was a.s.sisted by M. Schonburg Mulder. They commenced in April, 1849, and completed the whole of the task they had undertaken in the year 1853. M. Mulder's drawings proved, however, to be useless, and a new a.s.sistant, M. Mieling, was appointed.

After various troubles, the drawings were finally completed in 1871, and the letterpress and plates published in 1874. This great literary work, consisting of several hundreds of large lithographed plans and drawings of sculptures and statues, with a complete account written by Dr. C.

Leemans, director of the Public Museum at Leiden, was produced under the direction of the Dutch Minister of the Colonies. But even this splendid account of the Boro-Boedoer temple is not complete; since the date of its publication a new series of bas-reliefs have been discovered, and are being gradually photographed. In connection with the temples of Brambanan and Kalasan, also, new and interesting discoveries are being made from year to year. Indeed, images and sculptured stones are continually found all over the island. At Gunong Prau, forty miles south-west of Samarang, and further east, at Kediri and in Malang, there are large tracts of ruins; but the most imposing and interesting for the traveller are to be found in the centre of the island, in the neighbourhood of Magalang and Djokja, in positions indicated by the accompanying map. I shall endeavour first to give the reader a general idea of the extent and nature of these remains, and then, after a few remarks on the connection between Buddha and Brahma, to describe more at length the Boro-Boedoer temple, and that of Loro-Jonggrang, near Brambanan, the former of which is Buddhistic, and the latter Brahmanic, or Saivite.

[Footnote 12: "Malay Archipelago."]

[Ill.u.s.tration: SKETCH MAP OF JAVA. _Page_ 89.]

At Boro-Boedoer, ten miles from Magalang, there are the remains of the vast temple of that name; and about a mile distant, on the nearer bank of the Prago river, is the small and externally insignificant temple of Mendoet. Inside this latter is a vaulted chamber, the roof of which springs from walls twenty feet in height, and rises to sixty feet in the centre, covering a fine statue of Buddha.

At Brambanan, a village near Djokja, there is a large ma.s.s of ruins, of which the most important are the temple of Loro-Jonggrang and a group of small temples called Tjandi Sewoe, or Thousand Temples. In the neighbourhood of the former ruins there are six large and fourteen small temples, twenty separate buildings in all. The ruins of the latter group cover a s.p.a.ce of six hundred, square feet, and contain many splendid colossal figures. They are arranged in five regular parallelograms, consisting of an outer row of eighty-four temples, a second of seventy-six, a third of sixty-four, a fourth of forty-four, and a fifth (forming an inner-parallelogram) of twenty-eight. The centre is occupied by a large cruciform temple, ornamented with sculpture, and surrounded by flights of steps. All of these remains are greatly marred by the luxurious growths of tropical vegetation which cover them.

Half a mile further are the Tjandi Kali Bening, or Temples of Kalasan.

Here there is a very fine and well-preserved temple, seventy-two square feet in extent, of which Mr. Wallace says that it is "covered with sculptures of Hindu mythology that surpa.s.s any that exist in India."

There are also other ruins of palaces, halls, and temples in the neighbourhood.[13]

[Footnote 13: For this general account of the ruins in the neighbourhood of Djokja I am indebted to the accounts of Raffles and Wallace.]

The stones used for the construction of the Boro-Boedoer and other temples in Java, and for the images found throughout the island, are of volcanic origin. They are supplied by the numerous volcanoes in the island, and carried down the sides of the mountains to the plains below in lava streams. To-day such stones are used largely for making roads.

There is, however, a little limestone found in the southern districts of the island.

In the Boro-Boedoer, at Mendoet, and in the Tjandi Sewoe, Buddha was wors.h.i.+pped; but in the Temple of Loro-Jonggrang at Brambanan, and in the Temples of Kalasan, Siva (the third person of the Hindu Trinity--Brahma, Vishnu, Siva) was the central object of adoration. As the connection between the religion of Buddha and Brahma has been often misunderstood, a few words on this point may be of service to the reader.

Brahmanism, which was the established wors.h.i.+p of the Hindus when Buddha taught, was a religion which admitted of many sects; and Buddha, although his ethical system was independent of Brahmanic theology, recognized the existence of the popular deities. The distinction, then, between Brahmanism and Buddhism is purely arbitrary; the latter is merely a new growth of the former, and they both exist in British India at the present day. In China also there is a similar fusion of religious beliefs, where there are three established cults--those of Brahma, Confucius, and of the Taoists, or nature-wors.h.i.+ppers. The Confucian religion is rather a system of ethics than a cult; but the rites of the Buddhist and Taoist temples are attended indiscriminately by the majority of the Chinese, the priests of the separate temples alone confining themselves to the wors.h.i.+p of a particular deity. In India, however, the special followers of the two systems do not exhibit an equal liberalism of sentiment; while the wors.h.i.+p of Brahma is considered orthodox, the cult of Buddha is regarded as heretical. The Buddhistic temples of Java, coming midway between the oldest Buddhistic temples of India and the modern shrines in Burmah, Ceylon, and Nepaul, the present seats of the cult, supply an interesting _lacuna_ in the antiquities of Buddhism. The Javan form of this religion is especially allied to that of Nepaul. It bears a general resemblance to the Buddhism of Northern India, but is distinct from that of Ceylon and the south. It is not surprising, therefore, that ruins of temples dedicated to the services of both religions should exist side by side, nor that the grosser and more popular Brahmanic forms should have developed more largely than the more spiritual wors.h.i.+p of Buddha, both in India to-day and in Java previously to the Mohammedan conquest.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GROUND PLAN.

SECTION OF THE BORO-BOEDOER TEMPLE.

_Page_ 94.]

The temple of Boro-Boedoer is built upon a slight rounded eminence, the last of a chain of hills on the eastern bank of the river Prago. The entire edifice rests upon an equilateral base of six hundred and twenty feet, situated due N.S.E. and W., and rises gradually in terraces adapted in design to the form of the hill. These consist of two lower terraces which are square in form; four galleries (or pa.s.sages, with sculptures on either side), which are still rectangular in form, but have twenty angles to admit of their following the rounded contour of the hill; and four terraces, of which the first has twelve angles, while the remaining three are circular, adorned with cupolas, each containing a statue of Buddha; and finally the whole is surmounted by a huge cupola, fifty feet in diameter, in which rests the central figure of Buddha. Access from one terrace to another is gained by four flights of steps, running up the centre of each front, at the several entrances of which are placed two huge lion-monsters. Dr. Leemans, in his account of the building, enumerates _five_ galleries; but in reality there are only four, since the outside of what he calls the first gallery is merely a second basis for the whole structure, as is shown by the nature of its decoration, viz. simple architectural designs and groups of deities. The lower terrace, of which Dr. Leemans only guessed the existence, is now being excavated and photographed section by section. Only one section is kept open at any given time, because the earth is necessary to support the vast ma.s.s of stonework which forms the entire building, and it was for this reason, namely, to prevent the structure from breaking up, that this terrace was formerly banked up. It is found that this lower terrace is decorated with sculptures representing ordinary mundane scenes, the world being the basis on which all the higher religious phenomena rest.

In the first gallery (Leemans' second), the bas-reliefs represent a continuous selection of scenes from the historical life of Buddha; in the second, there are sculptures of the lesser deities recognized in the Brahmanic wors.h.i.+p, such deities having been adopted into the Buddhistic pantheon; in the third the higher deities are represented, where the _shrine_, and not the deity, is wors.h.i.+pped; in the fourth there are groups of Buddhas; and in the central dome there is the incomplete statue of the Highest Buddha--_Adibuddha_. This is unfinished by design, in order to indicate that the highest deity cannot be represented by human hands, having no bodily but only a spiritual existence.

"OM, AMITAYA! measure not with words Th' Immeasurable; nor sink the string of thought Into the Fathomless. Who asks doth err, Who answers, errs. Say nought."

Such is the design of this great religious monument, of which even the bare ruins, in their melancholy magnificence, inspire the mind of the spectator with mingled feelings of wonder and solemnity.

The temple of Loro-Jonggrang is one in which, as at Kalasan, the object of wors.h.i.+p was Siva, and not Buddha. This G.o.d, as already stated, was the third of the three persons of the Hindu Trinity; the first being Brahma, or the Creator, and the second Vishnu, the Preserver. Siva, the Destroyer, is also the Reproducer, and appears in Java to have been wors.h.i.+pped under three forms: (1) as Mahadeva, or the Great G.o.d; (2) as Mahayogi, or the Great Teacher; and (3) as Mahakala, or the Destroyer.

Guru (or Goeroe) is an alternative name for Siva Mahayogi, and his statues in this temple are so called. The edifice is greatly inferior in size to that of Boro-Boedoer; it rests upon a rectangular bas.e.m.e.nt having twelve angles, and measuring some eighty feet across in either direction. Like the former temple, its position is almost exactly square with the points of the compa.s.s. The bas.e.m.e.nt is ornamented with ordinary religious ornaments, consisting of sacred trees and lions. Above this is a gallery, of which the parapet on the inner side is decorated with scenes taken from the Ramayana (the second of the two great Indian epics), while the opposite wall of the temple is adorned with forms of deities. In the centre or body of the temple are four chambers, one of which--the princ.i.p.al--is itself larger, and contains a larger image than the others. They are each alike approached by flights of steps in the centre of the four sides of the edifice. The deities represented are--in the northern chamber, Durga; in the western, Ganesa; and in both the southern and eastern, Guru. Now, according to the Brahmanic pantheon, Durga (_the_ G.o.ddess) was the mother, and Guru the father, of Ganesa, the elephant-headed G.o.d of Wisdom. The connection between Siva and the Rama epic is this. The Ramayana is the history of the incarnation of Vishnu as Rama, and contains an account of the war waged by Rama with the giant Ravana, the demon king of Ceylon. In the poem mention is made of the Vedic G.o.d Indra and his Maruts. Subsequently Siva, the world destroyer, was identified with Indra in the form of Rudra, the G.o.d of tempests; hence the appropriateness of scenes from this story on a Saivite temple. It only remains to add that the name of the temple, _Loro-Jonggrang_, is simply the native name given to the particular Durga (or G.o.ddess of Efficient Virtue) represented in the shrine, and means literally the "Maiden with beautiful hips."

NOTE.--In view of the late appearance of the Adibuddha (probably the tenth century), I have thought it desirable to state that the theory of the general design of the Boro-Boedoer contained in the text is based upon a very interesting conversation which I had with M. Groeneveldt, who is a member of the Council of Netherlands India and Director of the Museum at Batavia.

Professor Rhys Davids has pointed out an interesting distinction between the Boro-Boedoer and the Buddhist shrines in India, viz.

that, whereas the cupolas at Boro-Boedoer are hollow, the _dagabas_ of British India are always solid. In the Annex will be found a detailed account of the various routes and the cost, etc., of travelling from Batavia to the temple districts in the centre and east of Java.

ANNEX TO CHAPTER V.

THE ROUTES TO THE TEMPLES.

Supposing that the traveller has been landed at Batavia, and wishes to visit the ruins in the east of the island, he will have the choice of three routes. First, he may sail by a Netherlands India boat to Samarang (or Soerabaia, if, as often happens from December to February, it is impossible to land at the former place owing to the surf); this occupies about thirty-six hours. There is an excellent hotel at Samarang--the Pavilion--where the night can be spent, and the following day the train will carry him to Amberawa, a distance of 50 miles by rail (or 30 by road). Here the railway stops, and a carriage must be taken to Magalang, the next town (with splendid views of the two volcanoes, Merbaboe and Merapi), which is some 20 miles further on, and where a halt must be made for the night. Ten miles' driving will take him to the Boro-Boedoer; the drive is one of extraordinary beauty. After visiting the Boro-Boedoer and the neighbouring temple of Mendoet, it is usual to return by way of Djokja (25 miles), which is the centre of numerous ruins. If, however, it is intended to travel overland, there are two routes available. The first is the regular posting route along the northern coast; the second lies to the south, and is perhaps more interesting. If the regular route is chosen, the traveller will proceed by rail as far as Bandong, a distance of some 90 miles; and then drive to Cheribon (80 miles), a place on the northern coast; and then, following the coast-line, from Cheribon to Tegal (40 miles); from Tegal to Pekalongan (35 miles); and from Pekalongan to Samarang (68 miles). In all these places there are good hotels, but two horses, and in some places four (as in the last stage, where the road pa.s.ses over mountains), would be necessary. Such a journey in a carriage would cost (apart from hotel expenses) 20, or, if it were done in a cart (sadoe) and two horses, half that sum.

If he pursues the second route, he will not leave the railway before Garoet. From Garoet he will proceed to Kalipoetjan (100 miles) by carriage; this occupies two days, and Manongyaya (with a hotel) is pa.s.sed, and Bandar, where there is sleeping-accommodation to be had.

From Kalipoetjan he will make his way to Tjilatj.a.p by native canoe, crossing the Kinderzee, a large lagoon, in eight or nine hours, and pa.s.sing some villages built on piles. There is also a curious cave and some edible swallow-nests to be seen. In travelling by this route it is necessary to take a servant to interpret with the natives. From Tjilatj.a.p the railway runs to Djokja. This town is about 25 miles from the Boro-Boedoer temple; the road is bad, and at times covered with dust to the depth of a foot or more, so that three horses are necessary. Even then the journey occupies four or five hours, although it is quite possible to return on the same day. There is an inn at the small village near the temple, but it is not sufficiently inviting to merit more than a transitory visit; at the same time, there is nothing to prevent the gentlemen of the party from staying the night at Boro-Boedoer if they felt so inclined. From Djokja, of course, the railway extends to Samarang and to Soerabaia. Especially the town of Solo (or Soerakarta), which is the junction where the line branches north or east, is worthy of a visit, as being the best centre for seeing native ceremonies. In conclusion I append a table of distances, means of conveyance, and cost (this latter being approximate only as depending upon individuals).

NOTE.--The regular hotel charge all through Java is five or six florins a day (= 10s.). Twelve florins = 1.

FIRST ROUTE.

Places. Means of Cost. Number Time.

Conveyance. of Miles.

Batavia to Steamboat 60 florins 240 36 hours.

Samarang

Samarang to Train 8 " 50 Amberawa

Amberawa to {Cart 10 " } 20 Magalang {Carriage 20 " }

Magalang to {Cart 5 " } 10 Boro-Boedoer {Carriage 10 " }

SECOND ROUTE.

Batavia to Train -- " 90 Bandong

Bandong to {Cart 30 " } 80 10 "

Cheribon {Carriage 60 " }

Cheribon to {Cart 15 " } 40 4 "

Tegal {Carriage 50 " }

Tegal to {Cart 15 " } 35 4 "

Pekalongan {Carriage 60 " }