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Updated: June 16, 2025
This town is about 25 miles from the Boro-Boedoer temple; the road is bad, and at times covered with dust to the depth of a foot or more, so that three horses are necessary. Even then the journey occupies four or five hours, although it is quite possible to return on the same day.
For six centuries, Boro-Boedoer was blotted from the memory of the people, and the heavy pall of tropical verdure which veiled the vast Temple remained unlifted. Superincumbent masses of trees, parasites, and strangling creepers wove their intricate network of root, branch, and stem round the monumental record of a dead faith and a buried dynasty.
A quarter of a century later, when the discovery of photography had made an exact reproduction of the sculptures possible, the Dutch Government instituted an exhaustive survey of the Boro-Boedoer temple. In July, 1845, M. Shaefer was commissioned to execute photographs of the bas-reliefs, but he was only partially successful.
It contains twelve verses in the Sanskrit tongue, and is about four feet in length by two in width, and about ten inches in depth. The magnificent temple of Boro-Boedoer, of which Mr.
I shall endeavour first to give the reader a general idea of the extent and nature of these remains, and then, after a few remarks on the connection between Buddha and Brahma, to describe more at length the Boro-Boedoer temple, and that of Loro-Jonggrang, near Brambanan, the former of which is Buddhistic, and the latter Brahmanic, or Saivite.
An unknown King and Queen, the traditional founders of Boro-Boedoer, appear in varied guise, throned and crowned, walking in religious processions beneath State pajongs, kneeling before Buddha with open caskets of treasure, and receiving the homage of the people, accompanied by bearers of smoking censers and waving fans.
For the words "Shadow, Unreality, Illusion," perpetually repeated by the yellow-robed monks on the beads of the Buddhist Rosary were inscribed on the inmost heart of the faithful disciple, who strove to attain that detachment from the world of sense inculcated by the creed expressed on the hoary stones of Boro-Boedoer.
Twenty-five centuries have rolled away since Prince Siddartha closed his unique career, and twelve centuries later the wondrous sanctuary of Boro-Boedoer was erected in honour of the creed eternally dear to the heart of the mystic East.
Remembering the fertility of the Eastern imagination, and the despotic character of Eastern rulers, it is easy to understand that such babads were more often than not reduced in point of veracity to the standard of an average fairy tale. M. Brumund, whose remarks on this subject are embodied in Leemans' work on the Boro-Boedoer temple, deals very severely with the babads.
No creed passes unaltered through any crucible of national thought; Indian Buddhism borrowed both form and colour from races which, in accepting the new faith, retained their own individuality and modes of assimilation. They gave as well as received, and the value of the gift depended on the character of the giver. No inscriptions exist on the stones of Boro-Boedoer.
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