From these crude attempts at a representation of animate creation, sprang nevertheless an art which, in the hands of the master-builders and sculptors of Central Java, who sought the beauty of truth that is verily without a rival, flowered out in prayers of stone, visible tokens of their yearning for heavenly reward, born of communion with the divine in deep reflection, only to descend again to lower planes, to the seeking of the praise of man, in the decadent conventionality of the later eastern Hindu empires. The story of the development of architecture and sculpture in the island from the immaturity identified with Pajajaran to the luxurious grandeur of the temples of Prambanan, the Mendoot and the Boro Budoor, hides a riddle no less strange than that of the bursting forth of Arabic poetry, full-blown in all its subtleness of thought, exuberance of imagination, perfection of language. The story of decline is written in the evolution of decorative design: the significance of motives based on the observation of the earth and her precious gifts, evaporates gradually in nicely waving lines, elaborate scrolls, insipid fineries. The _kala_-head changes into the roots of a tree, figurative of the forest; the trunk of Ganapati into its bole; at last the tree, roots, trunk, branches, foliage and all, with the sun rising over the forest, with mountains touching the sky, with rivers flowing to the sea, into conventional ornament. Islāmic ideals were not conducive to a revival of artistic conceptions fading into nothingness; neither was, to repeat that too, the painful contact with Christian civilisation. When the natives were made to toil and moil for alien masters, their virtues and energies blighted into the defects and failings of apathy. How could it be otherwise where an inefficient, venal police and a slow, defective administration of justice did (and does) not protect property against depredation; where exertion beyond what is strictly necessary for bare subsistence, meant (and means) not prosperity but increased taxation. With all its pretensions to superiority and display of ethical sentiment, the Dutch Government can scarcely be said to differ much from Baron Sookmool, the personified East India Company of more than three centuries ago. Holland’s wards in her rich colonies may be moulded into men, angels or devils, like the Triloka, the triple people of the Hindus, according to the treatment meted out to them and the education they receive. As far as Java is concerned, hoping in heaven’s mercy, they live in their old traditions, the light of the past and the shadow of the present. What will the future bring in advance of the day on which mankind shall be scattered abroad like moths? There is no knowledge of it but with God and the secret lies behind the Banaspati,[21] in the hand of him of the budding lotus-flower, the Deliverer from Evil. [Illustration] [Illustration] FOOTNOTES: [13]