Another turn and we dash like a whirlwind past the _kachang_-oil[126] and _boongkil_[127] mill of Mendoot; still another turn and, with a magnificent display of his dexterity in pulling up, our Jehu brings us to a sudden standstill before the temple. Opposite is a mission-school conducted for many years, with marked success, by Father P. J. Hoevenaars, in his leisure hours an ardent student of Java’s history and antiquities, ever ready to apply the vast amount of learning accumulated in his comprehensive reading on a solid classical basis, to the clearing up of disputed points, though his modesty suffered the honours of discovery to go to the noisy players of the archaeological big drum. His large stock of information was and is always at the disposal of whoever may choose to avail himself of it and, writing of the _chandis_ Mendoot and Boro Budoor, I acknowledge gratefully the benefit derived from my intercourse with this accomplished scholar, lately transferred to Cheribon. The exact date of the birth of the _chandi_ Mendoot is unknown but there are reasons for believing that it was built shortly after the _chandi_ Boro Budoor, at some time between 700 and 850 Saka (778 and 928 of the Christian era), in the glorious period of Javanese architecture to which we owe also the Prambanan group, the _chandis_ Kalasan, Sewu and whatever is of the best in the island. There are additional reasons for believing that the splendour loving prince who ordered the Boro Budoor to be raised and under whose reign the work on that stupendous monument was begun, founded the Mendoot too as a mausoleum to perpetuate his memory, and that his ashes were deposited in the royal tomb of his own designing before its completion. If so, he was one of the most prolific and liberal builders we have cognisance of; but his memory is nameless and all we know of him personally, besides the imposing evidence to his Augustan disposition contained in the superb structures he left, rests upon two pieces of sculpture at the entrance to the inner chamber of the mortuary chapel, if such it be, which represent a royal couple with a round dozen of children, just as we find in some old western churches the carved or painted images of their founders’ families.[128] We are perhaps indebted for the preservation of these suggestive reliefs to the circumstance of the _chandi_ Mendoot having been covered, hidden from view during centuries and to a certain extent protected against sacrilegious hands by volcanic sand, earth and vegetation. Almost forgotten, its slumbers were, however, not wholly undisturbed for, when Resident Hartman, his curiosity being excited by wild tales, began to clear it in 1836, he found that treasure-seekers, out for plunder, had pierced the wall above the porch and that by way of consolation or out of vexation at missing the untold wealth reported to be buried inside, they had carried off or smashed the smaller, free standing statuary.