116 Java. 



eating by steps and gateways. The central dome is fifty 

 feet in diameter ; around it is a trijile 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 there- 

 fore occupy an extent of nearly three miles in length ! The 

 amount of human labor and skill expended on the Great 

 Pyramid of Egypt sinks into insignificance when comi^ared 

 with that required to complete this sculptured hill-temple in 

 the interior of Java. 



GuNONG Prau. — About forty miles south-west of Sama- 

 rang, on a mountain called Gunong Prau, an extensive pla- 

 teau is covered with ruins. To reach these temples four 

 flights of stone steps were made up the mountain from oppo- 

 site 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 inclosures. 



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. Sculj^tured figures, 

 however, abound ; and the ruins of forts, palaces, baths, aque- 

 ducts, and temples can be everywhere traced. It is altogeth- 

 er contrary to the plan of this book to describe what I have 

 not myself seen ; but, having been led to mention them, I felt 

 bound to do something to call attention to these marvellous 

 works of art. One is overwhelmed by the contemplation of 

 these innumerable sculptures, worked with delicacy and 

 artistic feeling in a hard, intractable, trachytic rock, and all 

 found in one tropical island. What could have been the 

 state of society, what the amount of population, what the 

 means of subsistence which rendered such gigantic works 

 possible, will, perhaps, ever remain a mystery ; and it is a 

 wonderful example of the power of religious ideas in social 



