some event of tremendous consequence.[146] Rather than accept the theory that the ancient temples of Java were left intentionally defective from religious motives, viz. to emphasise the sense of human imperfection as an incentive to humility and prostration before the divine, we may believe in the Merapi, that wicked old giant, having asserted himself in one of his destructive moods, belching forth flames and ashes, shaking and burying the handiwork of Hindu and Buddhist pygmies with strictest impartiality. Standing on the first of the highest terraces on the south side, says an article[147] in the _Javapost_ of December 5, 1903, one observes a bulging out of the lower terraces, best accounted for by a violent earthquake in a southerly direction. When the galleries were cleared in 1814 and 1834, the volcanic character of the detritus which filled them (ashes from the Merapi, wrote Roorda van Eysinga in 1850) and also forms the substratum of the rubbish still unremoved from the once enclosed grounds of the _chandi_ Mendoot, furnished strong evidence in support of an eruption of the nearest fire-mountain having been the cause of the precipitate flight, perhaps the death in harness, of the builders. Of the preservation of their work too, in so far as finished, for, to speak again with the writer in the _Javapost_, the very fact of its having been embedded has saved much of its artistic detail; and the reason why some of the sculptured parts are damaged to a far greater extent than others adjoining, is probably that they were exposed earlier and longer. Deterioration and demolition set in rapidly when wind and weather began to ravage the wholly unprotected edifice, when unscrupulous collectors wrought havoc unchecked.