Field trips report:

From Borobudur to Prambanan: A Journey of Belief

[From Yogyakarta, Indonesia]

By : Lam Le Thanh
Liem Vu Duc

MA in Southeast Asian Studies Program

Bangkok, April 2011

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 From Borobudur to Prambanan: A Journey of Belief

It was April 8th, 2011, the sixth day of our eight-day field trip in Yogyakarta,
Indonesia. As usual, we got up at 6:00 am, next had breakfast at 7:00 am and then
moved to Borobudur at 8:00 am. However, it was so excited that some of us
decided to be the first bird wings reaching the Borobudur Temple, including me.
We started twenty minutes earlier than the schedule. In order to enter the
Borobudur Temple visitors have to wear a traditional costume named Sarong. I am
sure that your friends
will be very surprised
when they look you
dressing sarong if you
have never worn it
before. After five
minutes walking,
Borobudur appeared at
the front of my eyes by
its magnificent entirety.
Borobudur is located on The Borobudur Temple and Sarong
a hill and surrounded
by volcanoes. The nearer you reach the more impressive you feel the temple. For
me, I was deeply impressed by its architecture. There is no more word to say that
it is epic. Locating on the hill, it is easy for you to straighten your look at the
landscape of the area which makes the peaceful feeling. We walked around and
took some pictures before the sun rose over the temple. Four of us went back and
joined the group at 8 am to be introduced by the tour guide about the Borobudur
Temple.
The sight around the
temple creates an
awesome view. Specially,
Mount Merapi is an
active volcano situated
nearby Borobudur.

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Borobudur was built in the period of 8th
and 9th century and founded by a king of
the Saliendra dynasty; it was built to
honour the glory of both the Buddha and
its founder, a true king Bodhisattva. It is
believed that the name Borobudur has
been derived from the Sanskrit words
vihara Buddha uhr, meaning the
Buddhist monastery on the hill. The
Borobudur Temple became completely
neglected and given over to decay for a
long time in the past. Also, the temple
was affected by volcanic eruption and
other ravages of nature. The temple was
not rediscovered until the 19th century by the Dutch.

The temple was built on three levels around a hill which makes it become a natural
center. The first or the lowest level named Kamadhatu. It was clearly post the
original construction
and hides some reliefs,
is of uncertain
provenance and function.
The second level
comprises five floors.
On the wall of every floor
sculptured in bas-reliefs,
extending over a total
length of
six kilometers which tells Jataka, stories about the Buddha before he was born as
Prince Sidharta. The narratives relieves on the main walls read from the right to
left, those on the balustrade from left to right. The pilgrims, therefore, make
moving on the clockwise and they need to move four rounds to understand the life
of Buddha. I am sure that it is really attractive to hear about Jataka from a

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profession tour guide. However, we are not authentic pilgrims so that we could go
on a four-round pilgrimage. Also, limited time did not allow us to do that. Around
stairways we see many statues of Buddha which illustrate the different phases of
the soul's progression towards redemption and episodes from the life of Buddha.
We can see it through different poses of the Buddhas statues. The third level is
three concentric circular platforms crowned by the main stupa. It is said that if
you touch Buddhas hands inside seventy-two stupas in this level, your dreams
will come true. What a pity that we could not enter because of repairing. Day by

day, there is a group of workers who has been cleaning deposit of volcanic sand
and soil on the drainage system under the floor in order to prevent negative
impacts for the temple. This work will also clean the drainage system from deposit
soil carried by visitors step and rubbish. Hence, when you visit the Borobudur
Temple, please do not leave litter in order to contribute to protect the temple.

Our filed trip in the Borobudur Temple ended regrettably after two-hour visit
which is not long enough for us to hear all about Jataka. In my viewpoint,
Borobudur is the most interesting destination of my field trip in Indonesia. Here, I
know more about Buddhism and its development as one of the big religions in
Indonesian history. Specially, through amazing story about the life of Buddha I
learnt the valuable lesson on how to live. It is that we should live for other people
rather than ourselves. That is the experienced awareness we achieved during our
field trip in Indonesia in general and Borobudur in particular. After that we went
back the hotel for lunch and prepare for our continuous trip.

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 Our class and Ajarns in the Borobudur Temple

Prambanan
A Hindu Architectural Magnificence

At 1:00 pm, we left Borobudur to Prambanan on the road still witnessed the latest
Merapi Volcanos eruption in November 2010. The short, sudden and heavy rain
could not prevent us from excitement to contemplate the temples and they did not
disappoint. The temple compound is located at Bokoharjo Village, Prambanan,
approximately 18 km east of Yogyakarta city on the boundary
between Yogyakarta and Central Java province. The Prambanan group,
a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is the largest Hindu temple in Indonesia, and is
one of the largest Hindu temples in Southeast Asia. It is characterized by its tall
and pointed architecture, typical of Hindu temple architecture, and by the towering
47m high central building inside a large complex of individual temples.

It is hard for us to believe that on the Dieng Plateau, central Java, for nearly two
hundred years, the two great complex Buddhist and Hinduism architectures were
introduced, just sixty kilometers far from each other. Those are the Javanese
ceremonial center of the 8th and 10th centuries which never a secular settlement but
site of pilgrimage and monastic habitations. The glorious Complex stone temples
and remains of Monasteries distributed along the route of worship on a high

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plateau ca. 2000 m. The Prambanan complex was also known as Lorojonggrang
Temple. The word Prambanan refers to the name of a District, Prambanan District,
whereas Candi Lorojonggrang [slender maiden], named after a Javanese folk term,
refers to its actual name, called by locals.

Hindu Temples at Prambanan (Arvind Garg/Corbis)

For those who have not been very much familiar with the Southeast Asian
Hinduism culture, such as Angkor, the presence of Prambanan is found as an
architectural marvel, particularly after experiencing the Buddhist sacred
environment of Borobudur. Thus, it is significant to be aware that that some 60
kilometers from Borobudur travelers could enter another world of gods the
world of Hinduism deities.

The complex temple is believed to build in 856 C.E, after a construction period of
perhaps twenty-five years. Looking back the historical landscape of central and
eastern Java island, the introduction of Prambanan is believe to be a Hindu
Sanjaya Dynasty's answer to the
Buddhist Sailendra Dynasty's Borobudur and Sewu temples nearby. Historians
suggest that the construction of Prambanan probably was meant to mark the return
of the Hindu Sanjaya Dynasty to power in Central Java after almost a century of
Buddhist Sailendra Dynasty domination.

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The Lara Jonggrang group includes 224 subsidiary chapels symmetric ally
arranged around a central complex on an artificially raised plateau. The main
buildings are temples to Brahma and Vishnu that flank a shrine dedicated to Shiva.
Facing this trinity are three auxiliary temples. That facing the Shiva temple
contains a Nandin state. The purpose of the buildings facing the Brahma and
Vishnu temples is still unclear. Earlier theories suggested that they were meant to
hold images of the vahanas (vehicles) of those gods, but this idea had now been
discarded, since other temple complexes with the same basic plan have
discovered, none of them with the requisite statues of goose and eagle (garuda)
(John N. Miksic, 2004, Prambanan). After more than one thousand years of
earthquakes and natural destructions, those subsidiary chapels almost collapsed,
left a hundred thousands of stone fragments laying on the ground. More or less,
the ruin of foundations offers us an impressive scale of the complex temples,
including three concentric squares: I - Outer square (222 x 390 meters) surrounded
by a 1 meter boundary wall, II - Middle square (110 x 110 meters) surrounded by
a 1 meter boundary wall, III - Center square (34 x 34 meters) surrounded by a 1
meter boundary wall. All the three squares have gates to connect the other squares.
The outer square does not have temples. Inside the middle square there are 224
Perwara temples which are arranged in 4 rows of temples. The first row consists of
68 temples, followed by the second row (60 temples), the third row (52 temples)
and the fourth row (44 temples).

In the central square, these three largest temples face the cardinal direction east,
feature large stone statues of the Hindu deities Vishnu (north), Shiva (center) and
Brahma (south). The centrally-located Shiva temple has a height of 47m and
measures 34m x 34m at its base. The Brahma and Vishnu shrines to the south and
north of the Shiva temple are 33m in height and measure 20m x 20m at the base.
The inside facing walls of the balustrades that surround the central structures of
these three shrines are covered with bas-reliefs that present episodes from Vishnu's
human incarnations as Krishna (the Vishnu temple) and Rama (the Shiva and
Brahma temples). The interior of the Shiva temple is divided into four cellae. The
largest one contains an image of Shiva Mahadeva standing on a tall base, the
southern cella houses an Agastya, and that on the west, Ganesha, whereas on the

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north, Durga Mahisasuramardini. This group formed a standardized disposition of
images in Javanese Hindu temples for centuries that can be found at others
smaller. Apart from the temple structure, our impressiveness also was paid to the
systems of statuary and living and complicated narrative reliefs surrounding the
three main shrines. Most of them derive from the Ramayana depiction meanwhile
others come up with Krisnayana, Tandava (an illustration of dance postures on
Natyasastra text) and so on.

Prambanan's Central Square Courtyand Layout

The performance of the complex temples significantly contributes to our

understanding about the phenomenon of Indian cultural influence on the classical
Southeast Asia. Some comparison thus can be logically made between Prambanan
and the Cambodian 9th -14th Century Angkor complex to show how diverse the
theme of Indianization reflects in the context of early Southeast Asian History.
By these means, locals in different places of Southeast Asia, in spite of sharing the
same source of Indian cultural inspiration, built their civilization in their own
creative way of thinking and practicing. There is not a shadow of doubt that the
more civilizations in Southeast Asia we were approaching, the deeper

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understanding and the more comprehensive and coherent picture of ancient
Southeast Asia can be introduced. In which, the presence of massive and
complicated architectures such as My Son Holy land, Angkor, Borobudur, Bagan,
Sokhuthai, Ayutthaya and so forth are convincible and living evidences for the
skillfulness, creativity of Southeast Asian peoples who not only adopted simply
outside influences but also mastered those to build a magnificent and marvel
cultural achievement. In a word, by this, Southeast Asian peoples had equally paid
the debt of gratitude to Indian culture. Among those, the complex of Prambanan
clearly has a tremendous role to play. It is praised as one of the most important
architectures among the early and glorious civilizations in Southeast Asia. In
Miksic words, The Prambanan complex was one of the most elaborate Hindu
architectural projects ever undertaken in Southeast Asia. It incorporates an
elaborate cosmology, with reliefs of numerous deities of the various compass
directions. An inscription written in 856 C.E. found in central Java probably
commemorates its inauguration. It was the last large temple ever built in pre-
Islamic Java. (2004)

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Without doubt, Borobudur and Prambanan are among the most expected
destinations for anyone who traveling in Indonesia. On a cultural landscape in
which Islam officially introduces an overwhelming influence, the presence of
those, a Buddhist and a Hinduism Temple, once again convincingly and
magnificently presents the theme of Indonesian diversity. Like pilgrims for past
centuries, we involved with the journey, along the miracle route of belief in the
sacred world of Buddhism and Hinduism, coming up with long thousand year
tradition and recalling a fragment of long lost glorious past.

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