Historical context in Indonesia is never easily mastered. Traders came early, from multilateral direction - India, China, Western Europe and Japan, Africa. They found already in place a vast variety of independent, largely self-sufficient indigenous groups already possessing well developed cultural, social and religious ways. Intermixing naturally occurs over the centuries and many a political entity came and went in these long reaches of time as well.
Early Monday morning we visited a physical remanent of one such early Javanese kingdom recently subject to archeological exploration. The site was of a ninth century Hindu temple honoring Shiva and his associated entourage, Parvati (Shiva's spouse), Durga (a Verdic sage) and Ganesha (Shiva's son), together with three smaller shrines housing their three trusty steeds, the bull, the swan and the Garuda.
The site proved a easily assimilated entry point into the multilayered complexity of Hindu mythology, construction materials and techniques and architectural styles likely to encountered elsewhere in Java and around the rest of Indonesia
[Having become increasingly flustered with my various attempts at effectively intergrating images into these blog posts, I have decided to insert a single "teaser" image followe by a link to a small set of related images that, when clicked, enlarge to render details more fully. Thanks your patience with all this experimentation.]
Early Monday morning we visited a physical remanent of one such early Javanese kingdom recently subject to archeological exploration. The site was of a ninth century Hindu temple honoring Shiva and his associated entourage, Parvati (Shiva's spouse), Durga (a Verdic sage) and Ganesha (Shiva's son), together with three smaller shrines housing their three trusty steeds, the bull, the swan and the Garuda.
The site proved a easily assimilated entry point into the multilayered complexity of Hindu mythology, construction materials and techniques and architectural styles likely to encountered elsewhere in Java and around the rest of Indonesia
[Having become increasingly flustered with my various attempts at effectively intergrating images into these blog posts, I have decided to insert a single "teaser" image followe by a link to a small set of related images that, when clicked, enlarge to render details more fully. Thanks your patience with all this experimentation.]
We experienced Prombanan Temple under a light summer shower during the early afternoon, but that proved no deterrent to our appreciation of this truely awesome 10th century Hindu temple complex. The sultan controlling this part of the Indonesian archipelago also extended his control into parts of the modern Souteast Asian mainland and thereby influenced the architectural look of Ankor Wat.
The hight of the central structures, the intricate and complex carvings, he narrative retelling of the whole of the Ramayana epic in hand carved stone bad reliefs were all stunning to behold. Other, essentially untouched piles of rubble nearby attest to the magnitude of the mighty reconstruction process that lies ahead.
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