Frightened by the persecution of Raden Bandoong, who tracks her from cave to cave, she gives untimely birth to a daughter, the fruit of her affection for turtle-doves, and dies. The brutal, baffled lover still haunts the neighbourhood, which therefore native mothers-to-be scrupulously avoid, though it is not observed that the virgins derive much instruction from the legend as far as concerns the consequences of Devi or Mboq Loro Jonggrang’s _amours_ at an earlier stage. From legendary lore we return to fact in the matter of the foundation of the _chandi_ Sewu by taking cognisance of an inscription, _mahaprattaya sangra granting_ or _sang rangga anting_, unearthed near one of its 246 (not thousand) temples,[120] extolling the munificence of the magnanimous Granting or Anting. The style of writing justifies the conjecture that the buildings date from about the year 800 and are consequently of one age with the Boro Budoor. If not erected by one architect at the command of one bounteous prince, and the gifts of several pious souls who possessed the wherewithal for devotional works, they were at least constructed according to one plan steadily kept in view, a good deal more than can be said of many religious edifices in western climes, which owe their existence less to co-operative than to contentious piety. In respect of area the largest of the temple groups in Java, the first impression received from it is that of a chaos of ruins, confusion being worse confounded by the quarries opened here and there, and partly filled again with earth and rubbish, while a luxuriant vegetation, regaining on the inroads of mattock and pickaxe, quickly covers what they disturbed. Looking closer, the separate shrines with their elaborate tracery appear in the fiery embrace of the sun like sparkling jewels, trembling with delight in the luminous atmosphere beneath the immaculate sky; the very marks of decay and ravaging time are beautiful; the weeds clustering round the broken ornament, the toppling walls, rouse to fanciful thought. No sound is heard; nothing stirs while we make our way to the principal structure, once lording it over the smaller ones which stood squarely in four lines, 28 for the inner, 44 for the next, 80 for the third, 88 for the outer circumvallation. Excepting those of the second row, their entrances faced inward and amidst their scanty remains the foundations have been uncovered of five somewhat larger ones: two to the east, two to the west and one to the north; like the outlying buildings, these are, with regard to their superstructures, as if they never existed. Of the terraces and staircases no other trace is left than the telltale unevenness of the ground. The resemblance in constructive methods between the _chandi_ Sewu and the _chandi_ Prambanan strikes one at the first glance; the same builders, it is surmised, strove here to do for the Triratna[121] what there they did for the Trimoorti; and if not the