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SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 6l 



construct these sculptured hill temples of Java is almost incompre- 

 hensible. No other people have excelled the builders of these tre- 

 mendous temples in their constructive skill and power of work. 



It would be quite impossible to embrace in a few remarks any 

 adequate account of the many colossi found in these Javanese 

 temples, nor will a few examples, however fitly chosen, aid in your 

 appreciation of them. I cannot in such a dilemma do better than refer 

 you to the writings of Raffle and the magnificent plates of the temple 

 of Boro-Bodo (Bara-Budur) published by the Minister of the colonies 



Fig. 



-Camel C( 



Ming Tombs, China, photograph from 

 F. B. Wright. 



of the Netherlands. Here we find massive megalithic architecture 

 in all its grandeur, relieved with a profusion of detail, decorated with 

 an artistic embellishment nowdiere else duplicated in the megalithic 

 age. These Javanese temples, as pointed out by W. H. Holmes, sug- 

 gest the great prehistoric terraced sacred buildings of Central Amer- 

 ica, 1 and yet they are so characteristic of East Indian art that they 





*A general view and ground plan of Boro-Boda (Bara-Budur), a typical 

 example of these Javanese temples, shows a rectangular terraced structure 

 with niches for sitting figures, like Papantla in Mexico, the whole covered by 

 a cupola 52 feet in diameter surrounded by smaller cupolas. Like the topes 

 or dagobas of Ceylon this building was for the enshrinement of relics rather 

 than a temple in the Greek or Egyptian sense of the term. 



