220 RELIGIONS OF JAVA. 



inscription in some unknown tongue, of wliicli, however, 

 sufficient has been deciphered to prove that it refers to 

 the foundation of the old town. Not far from this 

 place Mr. M. pointed out the quasi-Driiidical remains 

 of an open-air altar, consisting of a large stone slab, 

 raised ,a few feet above the ground, and roughly 

 sculptured with designs now hardly discernible, also 

 some ill-shapen stone figures, apparently of fetish 

 origin, and a few earthenware vessels. The forest, in 

 which these relics were discovered, is supposed to have 

 been sacred, forming part of that superstition. There 

 is much resemblance in the above monument with those 

 already described, as existing in the forest districts of 

 Southern India, appertaining to a rude form of Hindu 

 worship, apparently pointing at a link in the gradual 

 adaptation of one religious system into another. In 

 the northern portion of Java the Brahmans held sway 

 in the earlier centuries of our era, long before Buddhism 

 completely superseded them between the tenth and 

 twelfth century, but it is a mute question whether the 

 inhabitants of those wild regions in the interior had 

 ever come within the influence of Brahminical teaching, 

 in fact absolute heathenism is said to exist there even 

 now to an unknown extent. Amongst the lower orders 

 Hinduism has always been strangely mixed up with 

 fetish superstition, ascribing magical power to carved 



