2^0 



The Review of Reviews. 



SeptemOet 1, 1S06. 



Entrance to Chandi Sewa (-Thousand Temples ') 



covered them with a mantle of luxuriant vegetation, 

 and softened disdainful neglect by oblivion. Litt'e 

 more than a century of Moslem rule not only de- 

 stroyed the civilisation of fifteen centuries, but had 

 even obliterated from the minds of the people all 

 recollection of the grandeur of their ancestors. 

 When these national heirlooms were discovered by 

 the Dutch, the ignorant natives, living in their 

 squalid huts of bamboo and thatch, gazed upon the 

 works of their forefathers with amazen)ent. believing 

 them to be the productions of Demons or Giants. 

 At the present day, with these mighty temples as 

 models, and surrounded bv European and Chinese 

 architecture, their most ambitious attempts at build- 

 ings are devoid of any artistic conception or architec- 

 tural capacitv. The visible record of this ancient 

 civilisation is to be found only in heaps of ruins. 

 These chiselled stones are the palimpsest of a 

 Golden Age, dimmed and obliterated by the fana- 

 ticism and misgovemment of a century\ 



It is a fact, at least extraordinary, that, while the 

 temperament of the jjeople of Java is such that they 

 have readilv adopted, at different periods, three of 

 the great religions of the Aryan and Semitic races — 

 Brahmanism, Buddhism, and Moslemism — at the 

 will of their conquerors, they have steadily refused. 



during near'.y three hundred years, to adopt the 

 religion of their European conquerors. The number 

 of Javanese Christi.ins is less than 15.0C0, in a 

 population of thirty millions. 



The temple-building period of the great Aryar* 

 religions did not commence until a comparatively 

 late period. In the time of Herodotus (fifth cen- 

 tury B.C.) the Persians had no temples, and Tacitus 

 (first century a.d.) tells us that the great Germanic 

 races " would not confine their gods within walls." 

 Btiddhist Pillars and Topes were first erected in 

 India in the third century B.C., near'.y two centuries 

 after the death of Buddha. Their first object was 

 to commemorate some religious event or to indicate 

 a spot that had become sacred. Subsequently they 

 were employed as a repository for certain relics, 

 or supposed relics, of Buddha. The temple-building 

 period practically came to an end in the r2th cen- 

 tury. 



The Buddhist temples in Middle Java are, in the 

 opinion of manv competent critics, unsurpassed, 

 either in conception or magnificence of design, bv 

 anvthing either in Egypt or India. Sir Stamford 

 Raffles, in his ■ History of Java,"' says : — '' The in- 

 terior of Java contains temples that, as works of 

 art, dwarf to nothing our wonder and admiration at 



