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Updated: June 16, 2025
Ten miles' driving will take him to the Boro-Boedoer; the drive is one of extraordinary beauty. If, however, it is intended to travel overland, there are two routes available. The first is the regular posting route along the northern coast; the second lies to the south, and is perhaps more interesting. If he pursues the second route, he will not leave the railway before Garoet.
The weed-grown courts, the ruined altars, and the moss-blackened arches, encumbered with indistinguishable heaps of shattered sculpture, lack all the reposeful charm of Boro-Boedoer, still a sermon in stone which he who runs may read.
The vague simulacrum quickly faded, like a flickering flame in the wind which fanned it into life; but simple souls, as they pass Boro-Boedoer in the brief twilight, mutter incantations, and brown hands grasp the silver amulets which ward off the powers of evil, for the deserted temple is still regarded as the haunt of unknown gods, who may perchance wreak vengeance on the world which has forsaken them.
Surely we have reached the peace and silence of Nirvana at last! and the exquisite beauty of the surrounding landscape, mountain and forest, park-like valley and winding glen, transfigured in the deepening gold of sunset, stamps an ineffaceable impression of Boro-Boedoer in that mystic gallery of imagination and memory which retains earth's fairest scenes as eternal possessions of mind and soul.
The stones used for the construction of the Boro-Boedoer and other temples in Java, and for the images found throughout the island, are of volcanic origin. They are supplied by the numerous volcanoes in the island, and carried down the sides of the mountains to the plains below in lava streams. To-day such stones are used largely for making roads.
Siva, the Destroyer, is also the Reproducer, and appears in Java to have been worshipped under three forms: as Mahadeva, or the Great God; as Mahayogi, or the Great Teacher; and as Mahakala, or the Destroyer. The edifice is greatly inferior in size to that of Boro-Boedoer; it rests upon a rectangular basement having twelve angles, and measuring some eighty feet across in either direction.
The temples of Brambanam were erected shortly after the completion of that upper terrace in the great sanctuary of Boro-Boedoer which marks the traditional epoch between Buddhism and the later Hinduism, including Sakya Munyi among the avatars of Vishnu.
There is a monument marking the spot where Lady Raffles was buried in the green glades of the gardens at Buitenzorg; but the statue of Sir Stamford Raffles looks forth to the sea from the centre of the broad grass-clad esplanade of Singapore. The temple remains generally The connection between Buddha and Brahma The Boro-Boedoer Loro-Jonggrang.
Like all stupendous monuments of Art or Nature, Boro-Boedoer at first sight seems a disappointment, simply because the mind fails to grasp the immensity of the noblest Temple ever dedicated to the gentle Sage whose renunciation typified the greater Sacrifice offered by the Saviour of the World.
Only separated from Brambanam by a winding path and a green belt of jungle, stands the great Buddhist temple of Chandi Sewon, and the colossal figures flanking the entrance gate indicate a decadent phase of the ancient creed which Boro-Boedoer illustrates in the purity of earlier developement.
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