While predictions of the kind may be laughed at, the native belief in them and the foundations on which that belief rests, are no laughable matter by any means. Stories of mythical beings like Kiahi Satomo and Niahi Satomi, transformed into pieces of ordnance connected with the legendary lore of Trunajaya on one side and Moslim fanaticism personified in the cannon of Karang Antu on the other, prove that the native mind is still strongly imbued with pre-Muhammadan and even pre-Hindu ideas and modes of thought. Its imagination is fed by the fortunes (and misfortunes!) of an island which may be compared in the heterogeneous factors of its culture with Sicily, where Greek colonists built their temples in the high places of aboriginal idolatry; and the Saracens constructed their qubbehs overtopping the churches and cloisters into which the Christians had transformed the cellae and colonnades consecrated to Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Aphrodite, Pallas Athene, Artemis, the Dioscuri; and the Normans added their arched doorways and massive masonry to perplex posterity entirely. In Java the Hindu element, with a strong Buddhist admixture, predominates; it prevails wholly in ancient architectural activity, not to speak of Soondanese and Javanese folklore and literature, while later Christian influence is negligible if not negative. Everywhere in the island we find under the Muhammadan coating the old conceptions of life from which the Loro Jonggrang group and the Boro Budoor sprang: scratch the _orang slam_ and the Saiva or Buddhist will immediately appear. As the Padang Highlands, which preserve the traditions of Menangkabau, still ring with the fame of the Buddhist King Adityawarman, and scrupulously Moslim Palembang still cherishes the memory of Buddhist San-bo-tsaï, while South Sumatra clings to Hindu customs and habits for all its submission to Islām, so Java reveres whatever has been handed down from her pantheistic _tempo dahulu_ (time of yore), however attached to the law of the Prophet. Sivaïsm and Buddhism were deeply rooted in the island; if the political power of its old creeds was broken in 1767 with the taking of Balambangan, Hinduïsm nevertheless lingering among the Tenggerese and in Bali, their spirit goes on leavening the new doctrine and we meet with their symbolism at every turn. Not to mention Central Java, where especially in Surakarta and Jogjakarta their tenacious sway strikes the most casual observer, the great staircase of the Muhammadan sanctum at Giri is adorned with a huge _naga_, the worshipful rain-cloud descending in the likeness of a serpent, despite the Qorānic injunction to abstain from the representation of animate creation. The pillars of reception-halls and audience-chambers in the houses of the high and mighty, East and West, bear a remarkable resemblance to the _linga_, witness, _e.g._, the _kedaton_[7] built by the Sooltan Sepooh Martawijaya of Cheribon, a Moslim prince who ought to have evinced the