FRAGMENT FROM LORO JONGGRAN TEMPLE.
There are other regions of extensive temple ruins in Java, but none where the remains of the earlier civilization are so well preserved, the buildings of such extent and magnificence, their cults and their records so well known, as at Boro Boedor and Brambanam. The extensive ruins of the Singa Sari temples, four miles from Malang, near the southeastern end of the island, are scattered all through a teak and waringen forest, half sunk and overgrown with centuries of vegetation. Images of Ganesha, and a colossal Nandi, or sacred bull of Siva, with other Brahmanic deities, remain in sight; and inscriptions found there prove that the Singa Sari temples were built at about the same time as the Loro Jonggran temples at Brambanam. The mutilation and signs of wanton destruction of the recha suggest that it was not a peaceful conversion from Brahmanism to Mohammedanism in that kingdom either.
On the Dieng plateau, southwest of Samarang, and not far from Boro Boedor, there are ruins of more than four hundred temples, and the traces of a city greater than any now existing on the island. This region has received comparatively little attention from archæologists, although it has yielded rich treasures in gold, silver, and bronze objects, a tithe of which are preserved in the museum of the Batavian Society. For years the Dieng villagers paid their taxes in rough ingots of gold melted from statuettes and ornaments found on the old temple sites, and more than three thousand florins a year were sometimes paid in such bullion. The Goenoeng Praoe, a mountain whose summit-lines resemble an inverted praoe, or boat, is the fabled home of the gods; and the whole sacred height was once built over with temples, staircases of a thousand steps, great terraces, and embankment walls, now nearly lost in vegetation, and wrecked by the earthquakes of that very active volcanic region. These Dieng temples appear to have been solid structures, whose general form and ornamentation so resemble the ruins in Yucatan and the other states of Central America that archæologists still revolve the puzzle of them, and hazard no conjectures as to the worshipers and their form of worship, save that the rites or sacrifices were very evidently conducted on the open summits or temple-tops. I could not obtain views of these ruined pyramid temples from any of the Batavia photographers, to satisfy me as to their exact lines even in decay. There are other old Siva temples in that region furtively worshiped still, and the “Valley of Death,” where the fabled upas grew, was long believed to exist in that region, where the cult of the destroyer was observed.
GANESHA, THE ELEPHANT-HEADED GOD.
M. de Charnay did not visit these pyramid temples of the Dieng plateau; but after seeing the temple of Boro Boedor, and those at Brambanam, he summed up the resemblances of the Buddhist and Brahmanic temples of Java to those at Palenque and in Yucatan as consisting: in the same order of gross idols; the pyramid form of temple, with staircases, like those of Palenque and Yucatan; the small chapels or oratories, with subterranean vaults beneath the idols; the same interior construction of temples; the stepped arches; the details of ornamentation, terraces, and esplanades, as in Mexico and Yucatan; and the localization of temples in religious centers far from cities, forming places of pilgrimage, as at Palenque, Chichen-Itza, and, in a later time, at Cozumel.[5]