Part 12

One legend tells that this marvel of a temple was built by a rajah who, when once summoned to aid or save the goddess Durga, was followed by two of his wives. To rid himself of them, he tied one wife and nailed the other to a rock. Years afterward he built this temple in expiation, and put their images in it. An avenging rival, who had loved one of the women, at last found the rajah, killed him, turned him to stone, and condemned him to sit forever between his abused partners.

A legend related to Herr Brumund told that “once upon a time” the two-year-old daughter of the great Prince Dewa Kosoumi was stolen by a revengeful courtier. The broken-hearted father wandered all over the country seeking his daughter, but at the end of twelve years met and, forgetting his grief, demanded and married the most beautiful young girl he had ever seen. Soon after a child had been born to them, the revengeful courtier of years before told the prince that his beautiful wife was his own daughter. The priests assured Prince Dewa that no forgiveness was possible to one who had so offended the gods, and that his only course of expiation lay in shutting himself, with the mother and child, in a walled cell, and there ending their days in penitence and prayer. As a last divine favor, he was told that the crime would be forgiven if within ten days he could construct a Boro Boedor. All the artists and workmen of the kingdom were summoned, and working with zeal and frenzy to save their ruler, completed the temple, with its hundreds of statues and its miles of carvings, within the fixed time. But it was then found that the pile was incomplete, lacking just one statue of the full number required. Prayers and appeals were useless, and the gods turned the prince, the mother, and the child to stone, and they sit in the cell at Mendoet as proof of the tale for all time.

With such interests we quite forgot the disagreeable episode in the steaming, provincial town beyond the mountains, and cared not for toelatings-kaart or assistant resident. Nothing from the outer world disturbed the peace of our Nirvana. No solitary horseman bringing reprieve was ever descried from the summit dagoba. No file of soldiers grounded arms and demanded us for Dutch dungeons. Life held every tropic charm, and Boro Boedor constituted an ideal world entirely our own. The sculptured galleries drew us to them at the beginning and end of every stroll, and demanded always another and another look. A thousand Mona Lisas smiled upon us with impassive, mysterious, inscrutable smiles, as they have smiled during all these twelve centuries, and often the realization, the atmosphere of antiquity was overpowering in sensation and weird effect.

Boro Boedor is most mysterious and impressive in the gray of dawn, in the unearthly light and stillness of that eerie hour. Sunrise touches the old walls and statues to something of life; and sunset, when all the palms are silhouetted against skies of tenderest rose, and the warm light flushes the hoary gray pile, is the time when the green valley of Eden about the temple adds all of charm and poetic suggestion. Pitch-darkness so quickly follows the tropic sunset that when we left the upper platform of the temple in the last rose-light, we found the lamps lighted, and huge moths and beetles flying in and about the passagrahan’s portico. Then lizards “chuck-chucked,” and ran over the walls; and the invisible gecko, gasping, called, it seemed to me, “_Becky! Becky! Becky! Becky! Becky! Becky!_” and Rebecca answered never to those breathless, exhausted, appealing cries, always six times repeated, slowly over and over again, by the fatigued soul doomed to a lizard’s form in its last incarnation. There was infinite mystery and witchery in the darkness and sounds of the tropic night—sudden calls of birds, and always the stiff rustling, rustling of the cocoa-palms, and the softer sounds of other trees, the shadows of which made inky blackness about the passagrahan; while out over the temple the open sky, full of huge, yellow, steadily glowing stars, shed radiance sufficient for one to distinguish the mass and lines of the great pyramid. Villagers came silently from out the darkness, stood motionless beside the grim stone images, and advanced slowly into the circle of light before the portico. They knelt with many homages, and laid out the cakes of palm-sugar, the baskets and sarongs, we had bought at their toy village. Others brought frangipani blossoms that they heaped in mounds at our feet. They sat on their heels, and with muttered whispers watched us as we dined and went about our affairs on the raised platform of the portico, presenting to them a living drama of foreign life on that regularly built stage without footlights. One of the audience pierced a fresh cocoanut, drank the milk, and then rolling kanari and benzoin gum in corn-fiber, lighted the fragrant cigarette, and puffed the smoke into the cocoa-shell. “It is good for the stomach, and will keep off fever,” they answered, when we asked about this incantation-like proceeding; and all took a turn at puffing into the shell and reinhaling the incense-clouds. The gentle little Javanese who provided better dinners for passagrahan guests than any island hotel had offered us, came into the circle of light, with her mite of a brown baby sleeping in the slandang knotted across her shoulder. The old landlord could be heard as he came back far enough from his Nirvana to call for the boy to light a fresh pipe; and one felt a little of the gaze and presence of all the Dhyani Buddhas on the sculptured terraces in the strange atmosphere of such far-away tropic nights by the Boedor of Boro.

When we came “gree-ing” back by those beautiful roads to Djokja, and drew up with a whirl at the portico of the Hotel Toegoe, the landlord of beaming countenance ran to meet us, greet us with effusion, and give us a handful of mail—long, official envelops with seals, and square envelops of social usage.

“Your passports are here. They came the next day. They are so chagrined that it was all a stupid mistake. The assistant resident at Buitenzorg telegraphed to the resident here to tell the three American ladies who were to arrive in Djokja that he had posted their passports, and to have every attention paid you. He wished to commend you and put you _en rapport_ with the Djokja officials, that you might enjoy their courtesies. Then the telegraph operator changed the message so as not to have to send so many words on the wire, and he made them all think you were some very dangerous people whom they must arrest and send back. The assistant resident knew there was some mistake as soon as he saw you.” (Did he?) “He is so chagrined. And it was all the telegraph operator’s fault, and you must not blame our Djokja Residency.”

Instead of mollifying, this rather irritated us the more, and the assistant resident’s long, formal note was fuel to the flame.

“LADIES: This morning I telegraphed to the secretary-general what in heaven’s name could be the reason you were not to go to Djokja. I got no answer from him, but received a letter from the chief of the telegraph, who had received a telegram from the telegraph office of Buitenzorg, to tell me there had been a mistake in the telegram. Instead of ‘The permission is not given,’ there should have been written, ‘The papers of permission I have myself this moment posted. Do all you can in the matter,’ etc. Perhaps you will have received them the moment you get this my letter.

“So I am so happy I did not insist upon your returning to Buitenzorg, and so sorry you had so long stay at Boro Boedor; and I hope you will forget the fatal mistake, and feel yourself at ease now,” etc.

Evidently the little episode was confined to the bureau of telegraphs entirely, the messages to the American consul, secretary-general, and Buitenzorg resident all suppressed before reaching them. Certainly this was no argument for the government ownership and control of telegraphs in the United States. There were regrets and social consolations offered, but no distinct apology; and we were quite in the mood for having the American consul demand apology, reparation, and indemnity, on pain of bombardment, as is the foreign custom in all Asia. Pacification by small courtesies did not pacify. Proffered presentation to native princes, visits to their bizarre palaces, and attendance at a great performance by the sultan’s actors, dancers, musicians, and swordsmen, would hardly offset being arrested, brought up in an informal police-court, cross-questioned, bullied, and regularly ordered to Boro Boedor under parole. We would not remain tacitly to accept the olive-branch—not then. The profuse landlord was nonplussed that we did not humbly and gratefully accept these amenities.

“You will not go back to Buitenzorg now, with only such unhappy experience of Djokja! Every one is so chagrined, so anxious that you should forget the little contretemps. Surely you will stay now for the great _topeng_ [lyric drama], and the wedding of Pakoe Alam’s daughter!”

“No; we have our toelatings-kaarten, and we leave on the noon train.”

And then the landlord knew that we should have been locked up for other reasons, since sane folk are never in a hurry under the equator. They consider the thermometer, treat the zenith sun with respect, and do not trifle with the tropics.

XVII

BRAMBANAM

“In the whole course of my life I have never met with such stupendous and finished specimens of human labor and of the science and taste of ages long since forgot, crowded together in so small a compass, as in this little spot [Brambanam], which, to use a military phrase, I deem to have been the headquarters of Hinduism in Java.” (Report to Sir Stamford Raffles by Captain George Baker of the Bengal establishment.)

There are ruins of more than one hundred and fifty temples in the historic region lying between Djokjakarta and Soerakarta, or Djokja and Solo, as common usage abbreviates those syllables of unnecessary exertion in this steaming, endless mid-summer land of Middle Java. As the train races on the twenty miles from Djokja to Brambanam, there is a tantalizing glimpse of the ruined temples at Kalasan; and one small temple there, the Chandi Kali Bening, ranks as the gem of Hindu art in Java. It is entirely covered, inside as well as outside, with bas-reliefs and ornamental carvings which surpass in elaboration and artistic merit everything else in this region, where refined ornament and lavish decoration reached their limit at the hands of the early Hindu sculptors. The Sepoy soldiers who came with the British engineers were lost in wonder at Kalasan, where the remains of Hindu art so far surpassed anything they knew in India itself; while the extent and magnificence of Brambanam’s Brahmanic and Buddhist temple ruins amaze every visitor—even after Boro Boedor.

[Illustration: TEMPLE OF LORO JONGGRAN AT BRAMBANAM.]

We had intended to drive from Boro Boedor across country to Brambanam, but, affairs of state obliging us to return from our Nirvana directly to Djokja, we fell back upon the railroad’s promised convenience. In this guide-bookless land, where every white resident knows every crook and turn in Amsterdam’s streets, and next to nothing about the island of Java, a kind dispenser of misinformation had told us that the railway-station of Brambanam was close beside the temple ruins; and we had believed him. The railway had been completed and formally opened but a few days before our visit, and our Malay servant was also quite sure that the road ran past the temples, and that the station was at their very gates.

When the train had shrieked away from the lone little station building, we learned that the ruins were a mile distant, with no sort of a vehicle nor an animal nor a palanquin to be had; and archæological zeal suffered a chill even in that tropic noonday. The station-master was all courtesy and sympathy; but the choice for us lay between walking or waiting at the station four hours for the next train on to Solo.

We strolled very slowly along the broad, open country road under the deadly, direct rays of the midday sun,—at the time when, as the Hindus say, “only Englishmen and dogs are abroad,”—reaching at last a pretty village and the grateful shade of tall kanari-trees, where the people were lounging at ease at the close of the morning’s busy passer. Every house, shed, and stall had made use of carved temple stones for its foundations, and the road was lined with more such recha—artistic remains from the inexhaustible storehouse and quarry of the neighboring ruins. Piles of tempting fruit remained for sale, and brown babies sprawled content on the warm lap of earth, the tiniest ones eating the green edge of watermelon-rind with avidity, and tender mothers cramming cold sweet potato into the mouths of infants two and four months old. There was such an easy, enviable tropical calm of abundant living and leisure in that Lilliput village under Brobdingnag trees that I longed to fling away my “Fergusson,” let slip life’s one golden, glowing, scorching opportunity to be informed on ninth-century Brahmanic temples, and, putting off all starched and unnecessary garments of white civilization, join that lifelong, happy-go-lucky, care-free picnic party under the kanari-trees of Brambanam; but—

A turn in the road, a break in the jungle at one side of the highway, disclosed three pyramidal temples in a vast square court, with the ruins of three corresponding temples, all fallen to rubbish-heaps, ranged in line facing them. These ruined piles alone remain of the group of twenty temples dedicated to Loro Jonggran, “the pure, exalted virgin” of the Javanese, worshiped in India as Deva, Durga, Kali, or Parvati. Even the three temples that are best preserved have crumbled at their summits and lost their angles; but enough remains for the eye to reconstruct the symmetrical piles and carry out the once perfect lines. The structures rise in terraces and broad courses, tapering like the Dravidian gopuras of southern India, and covered, like them, with images, bas-reliefs, and ornamental carvings. Grand staircases ascend from each of the four sides to square chapels or alcoves half-way up in the solid body of the pyramid, and each chapel once contained an image. The main or central temple now remaining still enshrines in its west or farther chamber an image of Ganesha, the hideous elephant-headed son of Siva and Parvati. Broken images of Siva and Parvati were found in the south and north chambers, and Brahma is supposed to have been enshrined in the great east chapel. An adjoining temple holds an exquisite statue of Loro Jonggran, “the maiden with the beautiful hips,” who stands, graceful and serene, in a roofless chamber, smiling down like a true goddess upon those who toil up the long carved staircase of approach. Her particular temple is adorned with bas-reliefs, where the _gopis_, or houris, who accompany Krishna, the dancing youth, are grouped in graceful poses. One of these bas-reliefs, commonly known as the “Three Graces” has great fame, and one and two thousand gulden have been vainly offered by British travelers anxious to transport it to London. Another temple contains an image of Nandi, the sacred bull; but the other shrines have fallen in shapeless ruins, and nothing of their altar-images is to be gathered from the rubbish-heaps that cover the vast temple court.

[Illustration: CLEARING AWAY RUBBISH AND VEGETATION AT BRAMBANAM TEMPLES.]

The pity of all this ruined splendor moves one strongly, and one deplores the impossibility of reconstructing, even on paper, the whole magnificent place of worship. The wealth of ornament makes all other temple buildings seem plain and featureless, and one set of bas-reliefs just rescued and set up in line, depicting scenes from the Ramayan, would be treasure enough for an art museum. On this long series of carved stones disconsolate Rama is shown searching everywhere for Sita, his stolen wife, until the king of the monkeys, espousing his cause, leads him to success. The story is wonderfully told in stone, the chisel as eloquent as the pen, and everywhere one reads as plainly the sacred tales and ancient records. The graceful figures and their draperies tell of Greek influences acting upon those northern Hindus who brought the religion to the island; and the beautifully conventionalized trees and fruits and flowers, the mythical animals and gaping monsters along the staircases, the masks, arabesques, bands, scrolls, ornamental keystones, and all the elaborate symbols and attributes of deities lavished on this group of temples, constitute a whole gallery of Hindu art, and a complete grammar of its ornament.

[Illustration: KRISHNA AND THE THREE GRACES.]

These temples, it is believed, were erected at the beginning of the ninth century, and fixed dates in the eleventh century are also claimed; but at least they were built soon after the completion of Boro Boedor, when the people were turning back to Brahmanism, and Hindu arts had reached their richest development at this great capital of Mendang Kumulan, since called Brambanam. The fame of the Javanese empire had then gone abroad, and greed for its riches led Khublai Khan to despatch an armada to its shores; but his Chinese commander, Mengki, returned without ships or men, his face branded like a thief’s. Another expedition was defeated, with a loss of three thousand men, and the Great Khan’s death put an end to further schemes of conquest. Marco Polo, windbound for five months on Sumatra, then Odoric, and the Arab Ibn Batuta, who visited Java in the fourteenth century, continued to celebrate the riches and splendor of this empire, and invite its conquest, until Arab priests and traders began its overthrow. Its princes were conquered, its splendid capitals destroyed, and with the conversion of the people to Mohammedanism the shrines were deserted, soon overgrown, and became hillocks of vegetation. The waringen-tree’s fibrous roots, penetrating the crevices of stones that were only fitted together, and not cemented, have done most damage, and the shrines of Loro Jonggran went fast to utter ruin.

A Dutch engineer, seeking to build a fort in the disturbed country between the two native capitals, first reported these Brambanam temples in 1797; but it was left for Sir Stamford Raffles to have them excavated, surveyed, sketched, and reported upon. Then for eighty years—until the year of our visit—they had again been forgotten, and the jungle claimed and covered the beautiful monuments. The Archæological Society of Djokja had just begun the work of clearing off and rescuing the wonderful carvings, and groups of coolies were resting in the shade, while others pottered around, setting bas-reliefs in regular lines around the rubbish-heaps they had been taken from. This salvage corps chattered and watched us with well-contained interest, as we, literally at the very boiling-point of enthusiasm, at three o’clock of an equatorial afternoon, toiled up the magnificent staircases, peered into each shrine, made the rounds of the sculptured terraces, or processional paths, and explored the whole splendid trio of temples, without pause.

Herr Perk, the director of the works, and curator of this monumental museum, roused by the rumors of foreign invasion, welcomed us to the grateful shade of his temporary quarters beside the temple, and hospitably shared his afternoon tea and bananas with us, there surrounded by a small museum of the finest and most delicately carved fragments, that could not safely be left unprotected. While we cooled, and rested from the long walk and the eager scramble over the ruins, we enjoyed too the series of Cephas’s photographs made for the Djokja Society, and in them had evidence how the insidious roots of the graceful waringen-trees had split and scattered the fitted stones as thoroughly as an earthquake; yet each waringen-gripped ruin, the clustered roots streaming, as if once liquid, over angles and carvings, was so picturesque that we half regretted the entire uprooting of these lovely trees.

[Illustration: LORO JONGGRAN AND HER ATTENDANTS.]

When the director was called away to his workmen, we bade our guiding Mohammedan lead the way to Chandi Sewou, the “Thousand Temples,” or great Buddhist shrine of the ancient capital. “Oh,” he cried, “it is far, far from here—an hour to walk. You must go to Chandi Sewou in a boat. The water is up to here,” touching his waist, “and there are many, many snakes.” Distrusting, we made him lead on in the direction of Chandi Sewou; perhaps we might get at least a distant view. When we had walked the length of a city block down a shady road, with carved fragments and overgrown stones scattered along the way and through the young jungle at one side, we turned a corner, walked another block, and stood between the giant images that guard the entrance of Chandi Sewou’s great quadrangle.

The “Thousand Temples” were really but two hundred and thirty-six temples, built in five quadrilateral lines around a central cruciform temple, the whole walled inclosure measuring five hundred feet either way. Many of these lesser shrines—mere confessional boxes in size—are now ruined or sunk entirely in the level turf that covers the whole quadrangle, and others are picturesque, vine-wreathed masses, looking most like the standing chimneys of a burnt house. This Buddhist sanctuary of the eleventh century has almost the same general plan as Boro Boedor, but a Boro Boedor spread out and built all on the one level. The five lines of temples, with broad processional paths between them, correspond to the five square terraces of Boro Boedor; and the six superior chapels correspond to the circles of latticed dagobas near Boro Boeder’s summit. The empty central shrine at Chandi Sewou has crumbled to a heap of stones, with only its four stepped-arch entrance-doors distinct; and the smaller temples, each of them eleven feet square and eighteen feet high, with inner walls covered with bas-reliefs, are empty as well. When the British officers surveyed Chandi Sewou, five of the chapels contained cross-legged images seated on lotus pedestals—either Buddha, or the _tirthankars_, or Jain saints; but even those headless and mutilated statues are missing now. Every evidence could be had of wilful destruction of the group of shrines, and the same mysterious well-hole was found beneath the pedestal of the image in each chapel—whether as receptacle for the ashes of priests and princes; a place for the safe keeping of temple treasures; as an empty survival of the form of the earliest tree-temples, when the mystery of animate nature commanded man’s worship; or, as M. de Charnay suggests, the orifice from which proceeded the voice of the concealed priest who served as oracle.

With these Brambanam temples, when Sivaism or Jainism had succeeded Buddhism, and even before Mohammedanism came, the decadence of arts and letters began. The Arab conquest made it complete, and the art of architecture died entirely, no structures since that time redeeming the people and religion which in India and Spain have left such monuments of beauty.

[Illustration: PLAN OF CHANDI SEWOU (“THOUSAND TEMPLES”).

From Sir Stamford Raffles’s “History of Java.”]