130 COMPEXDIUM OF GEOGEAPHY AND TRAVEL 



intellectual improvement of the native. The prestige of 

 race might very well have carried in its train both Chris- 

 tianity and education, as it did v^ith the Spaniards in the 

 Philippines, but it is now disappearing, to leave behind 

 it a semi-pagan Islamism and the knowledge gained by 

 attendance at Mohammedan schools. The " culture- 

 system " of the Dutch in Java has often been severely 

 attacked, but there is much to be said in favour of it, 

 and a far more serious charge to which Holland has to 

 answer is her neglect of the education and religion of her 

 Javanese subjects in past years. 



8, Antiquities. 



The original source of the Hindu religion in Java 

 is not known. All that is known v/ith any certainty is 

 the date of its overthrow. In 1478, as has been already 

 stated, the principality of Majapahit was conquered 

 by the Mohammedans, and its great city destroyed. 

 But between the time of the Hindu immigration and 

 this date, whether we place the former in the sixth 

 century or earlier, a period of many centuries must 

 have elapsed, and from time to time, at dates wliich are 

 for the most part conjectural, a vast number of mag- 

 nificent palaces, temples, and cities, together with 

 sculptures and other works of art, were erected, whose 

 ruins now astonish the traveller as he comes upon them 

 in the midst of the forest or on the mountain side. 

 Volumes have been written upon these ruins from 

 the time they were first brought to the notice of the 

 antiquarian world at the beginning of this century to 

 the publication of Dr. Leemans' great work on Boro-bodor, 

 in 1884, and it would be impossible to notice here a 

 tenth part of those already known and described. The 



