Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
six small temples; disposed in five regular parallelograms. In the centre is a large cruciform
temple surrounded by lofty flights of steps richly ornamented with sculpture, and containing
many apartments. The tropical vegetation has ruined most of the smaller temples, but some
remain tolerably perfect, from which the effect of the whole may be imagined.
About half a mile off is another temple, called Chandi Kali Bening, seventy-two feet
square and sixty feet high, in very fine preservation, and covered with sculptures of Hindoo
mythology surpassing any that exist in India. Other ruins of palaces, halls, and temples, with
abundance of sculptured deities, are found in the same neighbourhood.
BOROBODO
About eighty miles westward, in the province of Kedu, is the great temple of Borobodo. It is
built upon a small hill, and consists of a central dome and seven ranges of terraced walls
covering the slope of the hill and forming open galleries each below the other, and commu-
nicating by steps and gateways. The central dome is fifty feet in diameter; around it is a
triple circle of seventy-two towers, and the whole building is six hundred and twenty feet
square, and about one hundred feet high. In the terrace walls are niches containing cross-
legged figures larger than life to the number of about four hundred, and both sides of all the
terrace walls are covered with bas-reliefs crowded with figures, and carved in hard stone;
and which must therefore occupy an extent of nearly three miles in length! The amount of
human labour 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.
GUNONG PRAU
About forty miles south-west of Samarang, on a mountain called Gunong Prau, an extensive
plateau is covered with ruins. To reach these temples four flights of stone steps were made
up the mountain from opposite directions, each flight consisting of more than a thousand
steps. Traces of nearly four hundred temples have been found here, and many (perhaps all)
were decorated with rich and delicate sculptures. The whole country between this and
Brambanam, a distance of sixty miles, abounds with ruins; so that fine sculptured images
may be seen lying in the ditches, or built into the walls of enclosures.
In the eastern part of Java, at Kediri and in Malang, there are equally abundant traces of
antiquity, but the buildings themselves have been mostly destroyed. Sculptured figures,
however, abound; and the ruins of forts, palaces, baths, aqueducts, and temples, can be
everywhere traced. It is altogether contrary to the plan of this topic to describe what I have
