All travel, though, is only such disillusionment and disappointment, and he who would believe and enjoy blood-curdling things should stay by his own fireside. The disillusioned traveler has but to choose, on his return, whether he will truthfully dispel others’ fondest illusions, or, joining that nameless club of so many returned travelers, continue to clothe the more distant parts of the world with the glamour of imagination.
XIV
PRISONERS OF STATE AT BORO BOEDOR
The fact is not generally appreciated that there are ruins of Buddhist and Brahmanic temples in Middle Java surpassing in extent and magnificence anything to be seen in Egypt or India. There, in the heart of the steaming tropics, in that summer land of the world below the equator, on an island where volcanoes cluster more thickly and vegetation is richer than in any other region of the globe, where earthquakes continually rock and shatter, and where deluges descend during the rainy half of the year, remains nearly intact the temple of Boro Boedor, covering almost the same area as the Great Pyramid of Gizeh. It is ornamented with hundreds of life-size statues and miles of bas-reliefs presenting the highest examples of Greco-Buddhist art—a sculptured record of all the arts and industries, the culture and civilization, of the golden age of Java, of the life of the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries in all the farther East—a record that is not written in hieroglyphs, but in plainest pictures carved by sculptor’s chisel. That solid pyramidal temple, rising in magnificent sculptured terraces, that was built without mortar or cement, without column or pillar or arch, is one of the surviving wonders of the world. On the spot it seems a veritable miracle.
It is one of the romances of Buddhism that this splendid monument of human industry, abandoned by its worshipers as one cult succeeded another, and forgotten after the Mohammedan conquest imposed yet another creed upon the people, should have disappeared completely, hidden in the tangle of tropical vegetation, a formless, nameless, unsuspected mound in the heart of a jungle, lost in every way, with no part in the life of the land, finally to be uncovered to the sight of the nineteenth century. When Sir Stamford Raffles came as British governor of Java in 1811, the Dutch had possessed the island for two centuries, but in their greed for gulden had paid no heed to the people, and knew nothing of that earlier time before the conquest when the island was all one empire, the arts and literature flourished, and, inspired by Hindu influence, Javanese civilization reached its highest estate; nor did the Hollander allow any alien investigators to peer about this profitable plantation. Sir Stamford Raffles, in his five years of control, did a century’s work. He explored, excavated, and surveyed the ruined temples, and searching the voluminous archives of the native princes, drew from the mass of romantic legends and poetic records the first “History of Java.” His officers copied and deciphered inscriptions, and gradually worked out all the history of the great ruins, and determined the date of their erection at the beginning of the seventh century.
At this time Sir Stamford wrote: “The interior of Java contains temples that, as works of labor and art, dwarf to nothing all our wonder and admiration at the pyramids of Egypt.” Then Alfred Russel Wallace said: “The number and beauty of the architectural remains in Java ... far surpass those of Central America, and perhaps even those of India.” And of Boro Boedor he wrote: “The amount of human labor and skill expended on the Great Pyramid of Egypt sinks into insignificance when compared with that required to complete this sculptured hill-temple in the interior of Java.” Herr Brumund called Boro Boedor “the most remarkable and magnificent monument Buddhism has ever erected”; and Fergusson, in his “History of Indian and Eastern Architecture,” finds in that edifice the highest development of Buddhist art, an epitome of all its arts and ritual, and the culmination of the architectural style which, originating at Barhut a thousand years before, had begun to decay in India at the time the colonists were erecting this masterpiece of the ages in the heart of Java.
There is yet no Baedeker, or Murray, or local red book to lead one to and about the temples and present every dry detail of fact. The references to the ruins in books of travel and general literature are vague or cautious generalities, absurd misstatements, or guesses. In the great libraries of the world’s capitals the archæologists’ reports are rare, and on the island only Dutch editions are available. Fergusson is one’s only portable guide and aid to understanding; but as he never visited the stupendous ruin, his is but a formal record of the main facts. Dutch scientists criticize Sir Stamford Raffles’s work and all that Von Humboldt and Lassen deduced from it concerning Javanese religion and mythology. They entirely put aside all native histories and traditions, searching and accepting only Chinese and Arabic works, and making a close study of ancient inscriptions, upon the rendering of which few of the Dutch savants agree.
We had applied for new toelatings-kaarten, or admission tickets, to the interior of the island; and as they had not arrived by the afternoon before we intended leaving Buitenzorg, we drove to the assistant resident’s to inquire. “You shall have them this evening,” said that gracious and courtly official, standing beside the huge carriage; “but as it is only the merest matter of form, go right along in the morning, ladies, anyhow, and I shall send the papers after you by post. To Tissak Malaya? No? Well, then, to Djokjakarta.”