Itevieie of Reviews, lldjOS. 



THE TEMPLE RUINS OF JAVA. 



By Senator the Hon. Staniforth Smith. 

 No. 2. 



Few people are awaxe of the size and magnificence 



-f the temple ruins of Java, and many, no doubt, 



are unaware of the wonderful civilisation that existed 



close to the coasts of Australia at a time when our 



ancestors Ln WL-stern Europe were still Pagans. 



The Javanese belong to the Malay stock. Ac- 

 cording to their traditions they migrated from the 

 Red Sea litoral along the southern shores of Asia 

 \ at a remote period, when Java was connected w'ith 

 Asia by land. They were nomadic hunters, wander- 

 ing from place to place, and worshipping the sun, 

 moon and stars, and other natural phenomena. 



In the year 74 a.d., according to Javanese annals, 

 the invasion of the races from Continental India 

 took place, and Java was ruled by Hindu dynasties 

 until the beginning of the 15th century, when the 

 Arabs conquered the island and con\erted its in- 

 habitants to the Islamic faitli. It was during the 

 first eight or ten centuries of our era that Central 

 \ and East Java were covered with the magnificent 

 • temples of Buddhist and Brahminic believers, and 

 during this period a rich literature sprang up, and 

 arts and sciences flourished. The very existence of 

 this ancient civilisation was unknomi to Europeans 

 little more than a century ago. The indifference of 

 the natives to their ancient temples, after they had 

 embraced the faith of Islam, caused these ancient 

 ancestral shrines to be neglected and overgrown 

 with tropical vegetation, and ultimately forgotten. 

 It has been stated that these ruins w-ere first dis- 

 overed during the Governorship of Sir Stamford 

 Raffles, but the\- were known, to the Dutch long 

 before the term of British rule (1811-1816). Sir 

 Stamford Raffles, in his " History of Java," men- 

 tions that a Dutch engineer, in 1797, when con- 

 .strurting a fort near Djokjakarta, spoke of the ruins 

 •f Parambanan, although no proper description had 

 been published up to that time. Their existence 

 was probably revealed to the Dutch when they first 

 invaded these territories of the Sultans of Mataram. 

 It, how-ever, remained for Sir Stamford Raffles, 

 with his extraordinary vigour of mind and body, to 

 have the ruined temples explored and excavated, 

 the stone inscriptions deciphered, arid the literature 

 of the Javanese —historic, legendary and poetic — 

 'ollected and deciphered. 



The Javanese were only really great urvder the 

 direction of their Hindu conquerors, and under the 

 stimulus of a religious fervour, that in all ages has 

 ever called for the most sublime conceptions. These 

 often find expression in the marvellous architec- 



tural creations, which enshrine the object of their 

 adoration, or withii^ which they \TOrship their deity. 

 But this mental exaltation, this grandeur of con- 

 ception, which materialises in the construction of 

 some of the most wonderful temples ever raised by 

 human hands, was at once the crownit^g glory and 

 the destruction of the governing race. The Hindu 

 religion, more than any other, is a religion of rapt 

 contemplation, of esoteric mysticism and metaphy- 

 sical speculation. As their intellect was refined 

 their physical hardihood was softened, and martial 

 strenuousness cooled under a religion that taught 

 its votaries to look even upon bodily existence as an 

 ^vil. 



While it is true that the Javanese never clung 

 to their religion with that absorbing devotion evinced 

 by the Aryans of India, and while it is equally true 

 that they never entirely abandoned their belief in 

 the primitive Animism of their ancestors, there is 

 little doubt that Buddhism combined with other 

 causes to relax their physical vigour. In the isth 

 century their hierarchy was swept away by the burn- 

 ing fanaticism and fury of the Moslem, w^hose creed 

 was to convert or slay the infidel. Their Literature, 

 their Art, their Ci\'iIisation and their Religion were 

 demolished as a tidal wave devastates a beautiful 

 cit)-. The Mc«lem faith, instead of keeping the 

 torch of knowledge burning, as was the case in 

 Baghdad and Cordova during the Dark Ages of 

 Europe, fell like a dead hand on the mental vitality 

 of the people. 



The Sultans ruled in unrestrained absolutism; 

 they were at once sensuous and vicious, proud and 

 corrupt, despotic and feeble. Family quarrels, 

 Royal-harem intrigues, and the machinations of 

 worthless favourites, plunged the countn- into con- 

 tinual strife. The unfortunate peasantn', enfeebled 

 and defenceless, were ground under the heel of 

 remorseless tyranny. Their goods w-ere confiscated 

 and their lives subjected to the caprice of the Sultan 

 or the Pangeran ; resistance was hopeless, and thev 

 accepted in dumb misery the cruelties of their task- 

 masters, and the exactions of a cloud of harpies, 

 who deprived them of ever\thing bevond a bare 

 subsistence. 



Under this brutalising despotism, learning, poetry 

 and art vanished, native institutioios decayed, and 

 the Moslem converts were taught to look upon their 

 beautiful temples and classic shrines as infidel 

 abominations, and their statuary as works con- 

 demned by the Koran, until sorrowing Nature 



