The reader will recognise in this legend the hoary eastern material of many others current also in western lands. It pervades the legendary lore connected with the plain of Prambanan in widest sense, and one of its many variations, to be recorded farther on, applies specially to the Buddhist chandi Sewu or “thousand temples”, only a little distance from the Loro Jonggrang group;[43] in fact, originally adapted to account for the many ruins scattered over a vast area in that region, it has taken separate forms to meet the requirements of separate localities. Apart from tradition, we owe the oldest extant description of the Prambanan antiquities to the East India Company’s servant Lons at Samarang, who wrote in 1733. The Governor-General van Imhoff referred to them in 1746 and Raffles, his successor during the British Interregnum, not satisfied with writing and talking alone, commissioned Cornelius with Wardenaar to survey them and make plans for reconstruction. After 1816 things returned to the accustomed neglect: A short stay in the plain of Prambanan, says an authority already quoted,[44] is sufficient to note that thousands of valuable hewn and sculptured stones have been and still are used for all sorts of purposes ...; from time immemorial, great quantities of stone have been (and still are) taken from Prambanan by his Highness the Sooltan of Jogjakarta, generally once or twice a year ...; this happens, if I am well informed, in compliance with a written demand, fiated by the local authorities. The foundation, in 1885, of the Archaeological Society of Jogjakarta, which undertook the excavation of the parts of the Loro Jonggrang group covered with debris and vegetation, and the clearing of the whole, did little to ameliorate the situation with respect to the carrying away from the Prambanan temples, speaking collectively, of stones for the building of houses, factories, etc., and of ornament for the decoration of private grounds and gardens. Though bills were posted all over the ruins, including Doorga’s, alias Loro Jonggrang’s sanctum, prohibiting, by order of that Society, the salving of gods and goddesses with boreh and the defacing of the walls with inscriptions, its members themselves dragged statues away to fill a so-called museum of their contrivance at the provincial capital, dislocating things of beauty, ranging the disjecta membra on scaffoldings in a shed as crockery on the shelves of a cupboard. The monuments of Prambanan being primarily mausolea, their first concern was to dig for the saptaratna, the seven treasures buried with the ashes of the dead under the images of the deities hallowing those perishable remains. The plunder consisted in urns containing, besides the ashes, coins, rubies and other precious stones, pieces of gold- and silver-leaf with cut figures (serpents, tortoises, flowers), strips of gold-foil inscribed with ancient characters, fragments of copper and glass, etc. The mortuary pits easiest to rifle, had already been emptied before the semi-official spoilers turned their attention to them. This chapter is not the most glorious in the history of the Archaeological Society of Jogjakarta which, on the other hand, started a work too long neglected by the Dutch Government, even after Raffles’ vigorous initial effort. Incidentally it promoted the schemes of the superficial yet very ambitious, pushing to the front on the strength of what should have been put to the credit of more capable but, to their detriment, more modest labourers in the archaeological field: It is not always the most deserving horses that get the oats, says a Dutch proverb.
VI. SIVA (LORO JONGGRANG) TEMPLE OF THE PRAMBANAN GROUP IN 1901
(Cephas Sr.)
The Sivaïte character of the temples of Prambanan would be sufficiently indicated, if there were no other proofs, by the sepulchral cavities they inclose and which define them as the monuments of a graveyard consecrated to the memory of the great and mighty of Hindu Mataram, who worshipped Siva as Mahadeva, the Supreme God, Paramesvara, the Maker, the Maintainer, the Marrer to make again. Sepulchral pits or wells are, indeed, the Sivaïte hall-mark in the architecture of Java and here, at Prambanan, we find, in so far as preserved, the finest of the edifices raised to encompass and revet such pits, temple-tombs built for the glorification of the Creator in creative consciousness, highest boon granted to humanity, a glimmering of his All-Soul which, leaving the dust to return to dust, aspires to union with the Uncreated. A central group of eight shrines, once surrounded by numberless smaller ones, witnesses, in soberness of well-balanced outline, in precision of detail, to the exquisite art of those Hindu-Javanese master-builders who, like the architects of our old cathedrals, were unconcerned as to the opinion of man, but had the adoration of the godhead in mind and made the whole world partake of the divine blessing which quickened heart and hand, whether then descending from Siva’s nature as the essence of the Trimoorti, or from the sublime truth symbolised in the Christian Holy Trinity. The marvels of design and execution still standing at Prambanan in their dilapidated state, on a terrace excavated in 1893-4, were arranged, with the smaller ones now altogether gone, in a square whose sides faced the cardinal points. The material used in their construction was a kind of trachyte which, originally yellowish and hard to chisel into shape, has assumed a dark gray colour and by the richness of the sculptured ornament gives an impression as if easily moulded like wax. The three western temples, of which the one in the middle, consecrated to Siva or, according to the natives, the chandi Loro Jonggrang proper, is the largest, correspond each with a smaller structure to the east; still smaller chandis bound the space between the two rows to the north and south. The buildings dedicated to the Trimoorti, set squarely with a square projection on each side, rest on basements of the same polygonous conformation, so much in favour with the architects of that period; the inner rooms are on an elevated level because of their position over the vault-like compartments saved out in the substructures, and can be reached by staircases, once provided with porches, leading to the storeyed galleries. Vestiges of 157 diminutive chandis outside the rampart which encircled the central group, testify to the former existence of many and many more, shut in by a second and a third demolished wall. A closer inspection of the ruins, revealing beauties not yet departed, leads to an apprehension of what has been irrevocably lost. These temples of the three gods who are but one, always reminded me in their pathetic desolation of the capellas imparfeitas of Santa Maria da Victoria; what is incomplete, however, unfinished at Batalha, has run to decay at Prambanan—there the budding promise and arrested blossoming of an artistic idea, here the scattered petals of the full-blown flower rudely broken off its stem.
VII. PRAMBANAN RELIEFS
(C. Nieuwenhuis.)
Siva is the keynote of the Prambanan group, Siva, the Jagad, the Bhatara Guru, according to his prevalent title in the island. In the temple which bears his name, he appeared as the leader in the exterior chapel looking south; his wife, Doorga, looks north; their first-born, Ganesa, looks west. The latter, sitting on his lotus cushion, is represented as the Ekadanta, the elephant deprived of one of his tusks when fighting Parashu Rama; a third eye in his forehead betokens his keenness of sight; he wears in his crown the emblematic skull and crescent of his father; one of his left hands brandishes his father’s battle-axe; one of his right hands holds the string of beads suggesting prayer; his father’s upawita, the hooded snake, is strung round his left shoulder and breast. Doorga, his mother, born from the flames which proceeded from the mouths of the gods, stands on the steer she killed when the terrific animal had stormed Indra’s heaven and humiliated the immortals; her eight hands[45] wield the weapons and other gifts bestowed upon her by the deities at their delivery: Vishnu’s discus, Surya’s arrows, etc. etc., while her nethermost right hand seizes the enemy’s tail and her nethermost left hand the shaggy locks of the demon Maheso, who tries to escape with the monster’s life. This magnificent piece of sculpture, highly dramatic and yet within the limits of plastic art, the unknown maker having instinctively obeyed the rules formulated in Lessing’s Laokoon, some thousand years after his labours were ended, is the petrified Lady Jonggrang, victim of Bondowoso’s revengeful love. It does not matter to the native that Siva has always claimed her as his consort, if not under the name of Doorga then under that of Kali or Uma, ever since she, Parvati, the Mother of Nature, divided herself into three female entities to marry her three sons, who are none but he who sits enthroned as Mahadeva in the inner chamber, looking east, with his less placid personifications, the dvarapalas (doorkeepers) Nandisvara and Mahakala, the wielders of trident and cudgel, guarding the entrance, supported by demi-gods and heroes. The colossal statue of their heavenly lord, broken into pieces by the falling roof, has been restored and replaced on its padmasana (lotus cushion). In this shape the god wears the makuta (crown) with skull and crescent, has a third eye in his forehead and a cobra strung round his left shoulder and breast; his body, decked with a tiger’s skin, rests against the prabha, his aureole; one of his left hands holds his fly-flap, one of his right hands his string of beads; of his trident only the stick remains.
Siva, the one of dreadful charm, is everywhere, either personified or in his attributes: he dominates the external decoration of the Vishnu and the Brahma temples too, in the latter case as guru, even to the exclusion of all other gods; the middle chandi of the eastern row, facing his principal shrine, has his vahana, the bull; the one to the north his smaller image, while in the third, to the south, wholly demolished, no statuary can be traced. The inner chambers of the subordinate buildings show more plainly than that of Siva, which is adorned with flowery ornament, that the Sivaïte style concentrated ornamentation rather on the exterior than on the interior. The four statues of Brahma, the master of the four crowned countenances, who lies shattered among the debris of his temple, and the four statues of Vishnu in his (a large one with makuta, prabha, chakra and sanka, and three smaller ones, representing him in his fourth and fifth avatar and in his married state with his sakti Lakshmi in miniature on his left arm), are chastely conceived in the chaste surroundings of their chapels. In addition to the sorely damaged Ramayana reliefs, presently to be spoken of, they dwell, however simple the interior arrangement of their cells may be, among richly carved images of their peers and followers stationed outside: Vishnu among his own less famous avatars and supposed Bodhisatvas between female figures; Brahma, as already remarked, among personifications of the ubiquitous Siva in his quality of teacher, accompanied by bearded men of holiness. Siva’s nandi, a beautifully moulded humped bull, emblem of divine virility, watches his master’s abode, attentive to the word of command,—watches day and night as symbolised by Surya, the beaming sun, carrying the flowers of life when rising behind her seven horses, and by Chandra, the three-eyed moon, drawn by ten horses, waving a banner and also presenting a flower, but one wrapped in a cloud. The chandis of the eastern row, fortunately not yet despoiled of these striking specimens of Sivaïte sculpture, the statue of Siva opposite the Vishnu temple and enough to enable one to recognise that they too had once a band of ornament in high and low relief, emphasise even in the ruinous condition of their substructures, polygonous like those of the larger temples but on square foundations, the mystery attaching to the fascination exercised by the main building they supplement, and whose decoration, strictly Sivaïtic on the inside while partaking of the Buddhistic on the outside, has racked many brains for an explanation. The bo-trees and prayer-bells, profusely employed in its external embellishment, together with figures agreeable to the Bodhisatva theory, have led some to advance the opinion that it is a purely Buddhist creation, though perhaps tinged with Sivaïte notions. They were met with the objection that there is no sign of a dagob as distinguishing Buddhist feature; that the riddle of the resemblance between the statuary on the outside of the Siva temple and the conventional representation of Bodhisatvas, could find its solution in the canonisation or deification of kings and famous chiefs, a practice as old as ancestor-worship, which held its own in Java from pre-Hindu days up to our own. However this may be, if the Prambanan temples, and especially the one particularly dedicated to the great god of the Trimoorti, preached orthodox Sivaïsm to the elect of its innermost conviction, while tainted externally with the heresy of the deniers of the existence of gods, the indubitably Buddhist Mendoot reverses the process. This and the syncretism discernible in nearly all the chandis of Java, shows the religious tolerance of the Javanese in the Hindu period. And religiously tolerant they are still as true believers in the true faith of Islām; the fanaticism one occasionally hears of, roots rather in discontent from economic causes than in bigotry or over-zealous devotion to a creed which declares rebellion for conscience’ sake against a firmly established rule that recognises it, to be unlawful.
