25G r.oito-i'.oDo I'i's AC!-:. 



GeogTa})liic;il Society. Tlie work is entitled " Boi'o- 

 Boedoer, up het Eiland Java, door E. Leemans. 

 Leiden," consisting of 666 pages and 393 cartoons, 

 thirty inches by eighteen, giving sections and ac- 

 curate measurements, as well as representations of 

 every bit of carving extant. 



Accounts vary as to the exact age of this magnifi- 

 cent ruin, the 8th, the 10th, up to the 14tli cen- 

 tury, have been variously assigned as the period of 

 its erection. Ti'ust worthy authority, however, places it 

 between the 11th to 13th, probably the 12th century, 

 during which Buddhism had reached its pinnacle of 

 glory in Java, after the expulsion of Hinduism and 

 before its gradual decay and eventual supersession 

 by Mahomedanism in the 15th century. 



After a careful inspection of tliis wonderful monu- 

 ment of former civilization, I could not but be struck 

 with the degenerated condition of the Java race of 

 to-day compared with that of six or eight centuries 

 ago. The people seem to have lost their arts com- 

 pletely, and to have returned to a state of comparative 

 infancy ; nor do they seem to care for their religion ; 

 in the interior one but seldom beholds a mosque, and 

 rarely even in the towns on the coast. Of schools, 

 they are but few and far between, and proselytizing 



