Sunday, Oct. 16, was “temple day” ie we visited two major temples.
Borobudor was our first stop, close to the hotel and the main reason for visiting Central Java. Hearing about the 9thcentury from a Javanese guide and sensing his pride in what was clearly an enormous accomplishment lent an added dimension to all the factual info about this huge temple, the largest Buddhist temple in the world.
The Dutch discovered Boroburdur in the 1800’s overgrown by jungle and covered in volcanic ash. The temple is now a UNESCO site. Its architecture is elaborate and the numbers of columns, statues, and reliefs are replete with symbolism – all carefully explained by our guide; square platforms stacked on each other gradually culminating in a circular top. Many Buddha statues sit in lotus position in niches in the walls; unfortunately, a number are headless because of antique hunters. Several heads sit in European museums. Visitors are not permitted inside due to instability of the structure and the government’s struggles to manage the crowds that sometimes come during various holidays.
For the first time ever I saw a Banyan tree, a large one on the temple grounds. The tree fascinated me – masses of long strings growing down from its spreading branches eventually reaching the ground and establishing a new wooden growth. At one point on our stroll around the temple, our guide pointed to a different tree, explaining that its fruit is unique to Indonesia —the dorian, large and spikey with a terrible odor when cut but, a delicious taste. “The taste,” he said, “is difficult to describe. It is like trying to describe having sex.”
The second temple, Prambanan is for Hindu worship. Another large complex, but this complex has, or at least had, many temples. It was originally built in the mid-ninth century with three main temples and a couple of hundred smaller ones. But the site was abandoned and many of the structures reduced to rubble by earthquakes and volcanoes. The villagers developed an elaborate myth about the origin of the temples recounted with much drama by our Temple guide who had clearly trained as a dancer. He leapt around, his arms fluid as he reenacted the stabbings by a wicked king, his movements graceful as he described the beautiful princess the evil king wanted to marry.
The rebuilding of these structures proceeds slowly — since the stones were originally designed to fit together, reassembling the buildings is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. They are elaborate and chiseled with statutes and reliefs. The government has committed to rebuilding one temple a year — the guide informed us it will take 109 years to rebuild the entire temple complex but if we save our tickets we can still use them for entry to the completed project. We rode around inn open golf cart, of sorts, to see some of the smaller temples i and the piles of stones, some already sorted for reconstruction were everywhere.
We had a wonderful lunch at a restaurant selected by our guide on the way back to our hotel. It was located amid rice fields and the food was, as always, fresh and excellent.
