A Short Guide to the Ruined Temples in the Prambanan Plain, the Diëng Plateau, and Gedong Sanga

M. E. Lulius van Goor

jan 1922 · Landsdrukkerij

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To the east of the town of Djocja, on the boundary dividing the residencies of Djocjakarta and Soerakarta, there lay in former times a settlement of priests, in the shape of an extensive temple-city. The numerous remains of this city lie scattered on the plains of Prambanan and Sorogedoeg; they are now no more than ruins, sometimes even only meriting the name of rubbish-heaps; much, moreover, has now disappeared that half a century ago was seen by travellers and described and wondered at. However, these relics can still give us a notion of the "former magnifice for this temple-city, of the highly developed artistic sense of its architects and of its extent, which measured an hour's walk in breadth and more than an hour and a half's walk in length. Its temples were erected in the course of the ninth and tenth centuries, when old Mataram (+), the mighty Hindu kingdom, flourished in Mid-Java; but probably the building was suspended in the first half of the tenth century and many of the monuments were never brought to completion.