the symmetrical richness of the Mendoot, but making up in fantastic decoration what it had lost in sobriety of outline. The builders pandered to the unwholesome demand for that perfection at any cost which Ruskin censures as the main mistake of the Renaissance in its early stages, the workman losing his soul in exchange for consummate finish. But, though they bear the impress of decadence, the products of eastern Javanese constructive efforts are not wholly degenerate, never coarse or vulgar and well worth looking at from more than one point of view. The evolution of the ornament alone is exceedingly suggestive: the “recalcitrant spiral” which in Central Java ascends, decking the supports, topples, as it were, in East Java, losing its character and becoming a meaningless adornment of the casements of, _e.g._, the _chandi_ Panataran; the _kala_-heads remain but the _makaras_ change into a flame-like embellishment; where they are altogether dissolved, as in the _chandi_ Jago or Toompang, it is safe to conclude with Dr. Brandes to late eastern Javanese influences.[88] It has been conjectured that the migration of Hinduïsm to East Java was the effect of Buddhism gaining ground in the central part of the island; that the pronounced Sivaïte tendencies of Mojopahit were a reaction against Buddhist innovations. But it remains still to be proved that Mojopahit, though worshipping Siva as the supreme god of the Trimoorti, adhered to his overlordship in all its orthodox purity. There are, on the contrary, indications of Vishnuïte leanings, of Buddhist heresy, of a syncretism no less pronounced than that of Prambanan and the Mendoot. In the time of Old Mataram’s hegemony, Buddhism must have ingratiated itself to some extent with her eastern vassals and, though not one of the temples in East Java is Buddhist after the fashion of the _chandis_ Boro Budoor, Mendoot and Sewu, vestiges of the Bhagavat’s doctrine are undeniable in Kediri, Southern Surabaya and Northern Pasuruan. A fusion of Sivaïsm and Buddhism has continuously controlled the construction of the larger temples of the later eastern Javanese period, says Rouffaer. Statues found in many places, _e.g._ in the _chandi_ Toompang, are distinctly Buddhist and, what is most remarkable, though of later workmanship than those of Central Java and of a different style, tainted by decadent methods, they possess high merits as works of art. In their Sivaïtic surroundings they confirm the statements of the Chinese traveller Hiuen Tsiang who, perambulating India between 629 and 645, before the persecution of the Buddhists commenced, remarked upon the tolerance of the brahmins and _vice versa_, a virtue the Hindus carried with them to Java as already observed in the chapter on Prambanan. The kings of Mojopahit followed the example set in those regions: they were Saivas, Vaishnavas, Buddhists or followers of no one creed in particular, ready to protect and prefer each of them according to circumstances.