KRISHNA AND THE THREE GRACES.
These temples, it is believed, were erected at the beginning of the ninth century, and fixed dates in the eleventh century are also claimed; but at least they were built soon after the completion of Boro Boedor, when the people were turning back to Brahmanism, and Hindu arts had reached their richest development at this great capital of Mendang Kumulan, since called Brambanam. The fame of the Javanese empire had then gone abroad, and greed for its riches led Khublai Khan to despatch an armada to its shores; but his Chinese commander, Mengki, returned without ships or men, his face branded like a thief’s. Another expedition was defeated, with a loss of three thousand men, and the Great Khan’s death put an end to further schemes of conquest. Marco Polo, windbound for five months on Sumatra, then Odoric, and the Arab Ibn Batuta, who visited Java in the fourteenth century, continued to celebrate the riches and splendor of this empire, and invite its conquest, until Arab priests and traders began its overthrow. Its princes were conquered, its splendid capitals destroyed, and with the conversion of the people to Mohammedanism the shrines were deserted, soon overgrown, and became hillocks of vegetation. The waringen-tree’s fibrous roots, penetrating the crevices of stones that were only fitted together, and not cemented, have done most damage, and the shrines of Loro Jonggran went fast to utter ruin.
A Dutch engineer, seeking to build a fort in the disturbed country between the two native capitals, first reported these Brambanam temples in 1797; but it was left for Sir Stamford Raffles to have them excavated, surveyed, sketched, and reported upon. Then for eighty years—until the year of our visit—they had again been forgotten, and the jungle claimed and covered the beautiful monuments. The Archæological Society of Djokja had just begun the work of clearing off and rescuing the wonderful carvings, and groups of coolies were resting in the shade, while others pottered around, setting bas-reliefs in regular lines around the rubbish-heaps they had been taken from. This salvage corps chattered and watched us with well-contained interest, as we, literally at the very boiling-point of enthusiasm, at three o’clock of an equatorial afternoon, toiled up the magnificent staircases, peered into each shrine, made the rounds of the sculptured terraces, or processional paths, and explored the whole splendid trio of temples, without pause.
Herr Perk, the director of the works, and curator of this monumental museum, roused by the rumors of foreign invasion, welcomed us to the grateful shade of his temporary quarters beside the temple, and hospitably shared his afternoon tea and bananas with us, there surrounded by a small museum of the finest and most delicately carved fragments, that could not safely be left unprotected. While we cooled, and rested from the long walk and the eager scramble over the ruins, we enjoyed too the series of Cephas’s photographs made for the Djokja Society, and in them had evidence how the insidious roots of the graceful waringen-trees had split and scattered the fitted stones as thoroughly as an earthquake; yet each waringen-gripped ruin, the clustered roots streaming, as if once liquid, over angles and carvings, was so picturesque that we half regretted the entire uprooting of these lovely trees.
LORO JONGGRAN AND HER ATTENDANTS.