234 MAN: PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



Indian teachers had rapidly developed a very advanced state 

 of culture. " Under a completely organised although despotic 

 government, the arts of peace and war were brought to consider- 

 able perfection, and the natives of Java became famous throughout 

 the East as accomplished musicians and workers in gold, iron and 

 copper, none of which metals were found in the island itself. 

 They possessed a regular calendar with astronomical eras, and a 

 metrical literature, in which, however, history was inextricably 

 blended with romance. Bronze and stone inscriptions in the 

 Kavi, or old Javanese language, still survive from the nth or 

 1 2th century, and to the same dates may be referred the vast 

 ruins of Brambanam and the stupendous temple of Boro-budor in 

 the centre of the island. There are few statues of Hindu divinities 

 in this temple, but many are found in its immediate vicinity, and 

 from the various archaeological objects collected in the district 

 it is evident that both the Buddhist and Brahmanical forms of 

 Hinduism were introduced at an early date. 



But all came to an end by the overthrow of the chief Hindu 

 power in 1478, after which event Islam rapidly spread over the 

 whole of Java and Madura. Brahmanism, however, still holds its 

 ground in Bali and Lombok, the last strongholds of Hinduism in 

 the Eastern Archipelago 1 ." 



On the obscure religious and social relations in these Lesser 

 Sundanese Islands much light has been thrown by 

 Capt. W. Cool, an English translation of whose 

 work With the Dutch in the East was issued by 

 Mr E. J. Taylor in 1897. Here it is shown how Hinduism, 

 formerly dominant throughout a great part of Malaysia, gradually 

 yielded in some places to a revival of the never extinct primitive 

 nature-worship, in others to the spread of Islam, which in Bali 

 alone failed to gain a footing. In this island a curious mingling 

 of Buddhist and Brahmanical forms with the primordial heathen- 

 dom not only persisted, but was strong enough to acquire the 

 political ascendancy over the Mussulman Sassaks 

 and'tater"* ^ tne neighbouring island of Lombok. Thus while 

 Religions and Islam reigns exclusively in Java formerly the chief 

 domain of Hinduism in the Archipelago Bali, 

 1 A. H. Keane, Eastern Geography, 2nd ed. 1892, p. 121. 



