Everywhere in Java we saw them collecting the sap of the true sugar-palm and the toddy-palm, that bear such gorgeous spathes of blossoms; but it is only in this region of Middle Java that sugar is made from the cocoa-palm. Each tree yields daily about two quarts of sap that reduce to three or four ounces of sugar. The common palm-sugar of the passers looks and tastes like other brown sugar, but this from cocoa-palms has a delicious, nutty fragrance and flavor, as unique as maple-sugar. We were not long in the land before we learned to melt cocoa-palm sugar and pour it on grated ripe cocoanut, thus achieving a sweet supreme.
The level valley about Boro Boedor is tilled in such fine lines that it seems in perspective to have been etched or hatched with finer tools than plow and hoe. There is a little Malay temple surrounded by graves in a frangipani-grove near the great pyramid, where the ground is white with the fallen “blossoms of the dead,” and the tree-trunks are decked with trails of white and palest pink orchids. The little kampong of Boro Boedor hides in a deep green grove—such a pretty, picturesque little lot of basket houses, such a carefully painted village in a painted grove,—the village of the Midway Plaisance, only more so,—such a set scene and ideal picture of Java, as ought to have wings and footlights, and be looked at to slow music. And there, in the early summer mornings, is a busy passer in a grove that presents more and more attractive pictures of Javanese life, as the people come from miles around to buy and to sell the necessaries and luxuries of their picturesque, primitive life, so near to nature’s warmest heart.
All the neighborhood is full of beauty and interest, and there are smaller shrines at each side of Boro Boedor, where pilgrims in ancient times were supposed to make first and farewell prayers. One is called Chandi Pawon, or more commonly Dapor, the kitchen, because of its empty, smoke-blackened interior resulting from the incense of the centuries of living faith, and of the later centuries when superstitious habit, and not any surviving Buddhism, led the humble people to make offerings to the recha, the unknown, mysterious gods of the past.
THE RIGHT-HAND IMAGE AT MENDOET.
Chandi Mendoet, two miles the other side of Boro Boedor, is an exquisite pyramidal temple in a green quadrangle of the forest, with a walled foss and bridges. Long lost and hidden in the jungle, it was accidentally discovered by the Dutch resident Hartman in 1835, and a space cleared about it. The natives had never known of or suspected its existence, but the investigators determined that this gem of Hindu art was erected between 750 and 800 A. D. The workmanship proves a continued progress in the arts employed at Boro Boedor, and the sculptures show that the popular faith was then passing through Jainism back to Brahmanism. The body of the temple is forty-five feet square as it stands on its walled platform, and rises to a height of seventy feet. A terrace, or raised processional path, around the temple walls is faced with bas-reliefs and ornamental stones, and great bas-reliefs decorate the upper walls. The square interior chapel is entered through a stepped arch or door, and the finest of the Mendoet bas-reliefs, commonly spoken of as the “Tree of Knowledge,” is in this entrance-way. There Buddha sits beneath the bo-tree, the trunk of which supports a pajong, or state umbrella, teaching those who approach him and kneel with offerings and incense. These figures, as well as the angels overhead, the birds in the trees, and the lambs on their rocky shelf, listening to the great teacher, are worked out with a grace and skill beyond compare. Three colossal images are seated in the chapel, all with Buddha’s attributes, and Brahmanic cords as well, and the long Nepal ears of the Dhyani ones. They are variously explained as the Hindu trinity, as the Buddhist trinity, as Buddha and his disciples, and local legends try to explain them even more romantically. One literary pilgrim describes the central Adi Buddha as the statue of a beautiful young woman “counting her fingers,” the mild, benign, and sweetly smiling faces of all three easily suggesting femininity.
One legend tells that this marvel of a temple was built by a rajah who, when once summoned to aid or save the goddess Durga, was followed by two of his wives. To rid himself of them, he tied one wife and nailed the other to a rock. Years afterward he built this temple in expiation, and put their images in it. An avenging rival, who had loved one of the women, at last found the rajah, killed him, turned him to stone, and condemned him to sit forever between his abused partners.
A legend related to Herr Brumund told that “once upon a time” the two-year-old daughter of the great Prince Dewa Kosoumi was stolen by a revengeful courtier. The broken-hearted father wandered all over the country seeking his daughter, but at the end of twelve years met and, forgetting his grief, demanded and married the most beautiful young girl he had ever seen. Soon after a child had been born to them, the revengeful courtier of years before told the prince that his beautiful wife was his own daughter. The priests assured Prince Dewa that no forgiveness was possible to one who had so offended the gods, and that his only course of expiation lay in shutting himself, with the mother and child, in a walled cell, and there ending their days in penitence and prayer. As a last divine favor, he was told that the crime would be forgiven if within ten days he could construct a Boro Boedor. All the artists and workmen of the kingdom were summoned, and working with zeal and frenzy to save their ruler, completed the temple, with its hundreds of statues and its miles of carvings, within the fixed time. But it was then found that the pile was incomplete, lacking just one statue of the full number required. Prayers and appeals were useless, and the gods turned the prince, the mother, and the child to stone, and they sit in the cell at Mendoet as proof of the tale for all time.