Across the Equator: A Holiday Trip in JavaReid, Thomas H.
History
Across the Equator: A Holiday Trip in Java
Reid, Thomas H.
Java (Indonesia) -- Description and travel; Java (Indonesia) -- History
There is a small hotel at the Boro Budur where one is recommended to
stay when studying details, and we can well believe that sunrise as seen
from the summit is a sight one should never forget. We saw it in the
early afternoon when the heat vapours from the noontide sun partially
obliterated the landscape, but even so it was impressive. Except on the
right, where the mountains close in the horizon, the eye has a range of
many miles over fertile alluvial plains, studded with coco and banana
and palm trees, and every other patch of ground cultivated "like a tulip
bed." Miss Marianne North, whose collection of paintings in Kew Gardens
may be familiar to some of our readers, wrote of this view: "The very
finest view we ever saw."
The Temples of Parambanan.
There are other Buddhist ruins in the neighbourhood of the Boro Budur;
but the other more important collection is scattered over the region
between Djocjakarta and Soerakarta. One small temple, the Tjandi Kali
Bening, is reputed to be the gem of Hindu art in Java. This we did not
see; but, on another day, in a victoria drawn by four small ponies, kept
going by the wild gr-r-r-ee gr-r-r-eeing of our native running footman,
we drove to the scattered temples on the Plain of Parambanan, where,
with the help of another archaeological guide by Dr. I. Groneman, we were
able to appreciate the beauties of these 1100-year-old centres of
ancient religious devotees. These temples are the most interesting in
the country, though lacking the extent and grandeur of the Boro Budur.
Though they do not contain a single genuine Buddha figure, but many
images of Brahmanic gods, Dr. Groneman says there are many reasons to
justify the opinion that they were built by Buddhists, probably over the
ashes of princes and grandees of a Buddhistic empire.
In his report to Sir Stamford Raffles on these Parambanan ruins, Captain
George Baker, of the Bengal establishment wrote:--"In the whole course
of my life, I have never met with such stupendous and finished
specimens of human labour and of the science and taste of ages long
since forgot, crowded together in so small a compass, as in this little
spot, which, to use a military phrase, I deem to have been the
headquarters of Hinduism in Java."
In Volume XIII of the "Asiatick Researches or Transactions of the
Society instituted in Bengal for inquiring into the History and
Antiquities, the Arts, Sciences and Literature of Asia" (Calcutta,
1820), Mr. John Crawfurd, who, apparently, visited Java in 1816, gives a
long and interesting description of the ruins on the Plain of
Parambanan. He describes the locale as ten miles from Djocjakarta, a
valley lying between Rababu and Marapi to the north and a smaller
southern range of high land.
A few of the ruins consist of single isolated temples, but the greater
number are in groups, rows of small temples surrounding larger temples.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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