Then, at the passing of the light with the last flush from the West, in awe-inspiring stillness, the quivering stars lift their heads to watch the holy city of the dead; in clear-toned stillness, the night-wind moaning, the Rawa lamenting the lost civilisation of a lost religion whose symbols remain but are not understood, a mourning for humanity labouring in vain. The Diëng has been repopulated with a race between whose fanciful ideals, rooted in a forgotten past, and the rapacity of foreign rulers no lasting accord seems possible. Is it ordained that they, the thralls and the masters, shall continue in their present relations? Or will they disappear in their turn and, to quote Junghuhn, this mountain region revert to its free, natural state? Perhaps in the hour of upheaval native seers prophesy, when safety shall be found by none except to whom the Just Reckoner grants it. And mingling in one measure, which comprises the _jaman buda_, the time of bondage and the future, their dim notions of Mahadeva, the Beneficent Destroyer, and their conception of the dispensation of the Book, the leaders of religious exercise in the villages abide by their advice of submission until the true believers win the day, a day of glory for Islām, sure to arrive in the circular course of existence, which is nothing but Sansara, in attainment of Moslim brotherhood, which is nothing but Brahma Vihara, the sublime condition of love. Meanwhile, hearing is to be practised; haply it will lead to the comprehension of a lesson inculcated by each of the three creeds amalgamated in the Javanese mind and best expressed in the form borrowed from a fourth: The thing that hath been, is that which shall be; and that which is done, is that which shall be done,--or, in the version of the greatest poet of our own age: _Ciò che fu, torna e tornerà nei secoli._[34] [Illustration] FOOTNOTES: [22] Dr. A. B. COHEN STUART, however, derives Diëng from _dihyang_, the name found by him in old records. [23] The remains of both these exquisite little temples suffered severely from a gale in 1907, which blew some of the surrounding trees down, their trunks and branches falling heavily and disjoining the still tolerably erect walls, the _chandi_ Perot, according to latest intelligence, being wholly destroyed by the toppling of the tamarind it supported. [24] The _Brata Yuda Yarwa_ is the Javanese version of the famous Kawi poem _Bharata Yuddha_ which, in its turn, is founded on the Sanskrit epos _Mahabharata_. The war for the possession of Hastinapura is transplanted to Java; the Sanskrit proper names have passed into the nomenclature of Javanese history and geography; the Indian heroes have become the founders of Javanese dynasties, the progenitors of Javanese nobility. [25] One of those chasms, near the _dessa_ Gaja Moongkoor, swallowed not merely a dancing-girl, a most common occurrence in Javanese legendary lore, but a whole village.