imagined.
About half a mile off is another temple, called Chandi Kali Bening, seventy-
two feet square and sixty feet high, in very fine preservation, and covered with
sculptures of Hindu mythology surpassing any that exist in India, other ruins of
palaces, halls, and temples, with abundance of sculptured deities, are found in
the same neighbourhood.
BOROBODO.—About eighty miles westward, in the province of Kedu, is the
great temple of Borobodo. It is built upon a small hill, and consists of a central
dome and seven ranges of terraced walls covering the slope of the hill and
forming open galleries each below the other, and communicating by steps and
gateways. The central dome is fifty feet in diameter; around it is a triple circle of
seventy-two towers, and the whole building is six hundred and twenty feet
square, and about one hundred feet high. In the terrace walls are niches
containing cross-legged figures larger than life to the number of about four
hundred, and both sides of all the terrace walls are covered with bas-reliefs
crowded with figures, and carved in hard stone and which must therefore occupy
an extent of nearly three miles in length! The amount of human labour and skill
expended on the Great Pyramid of Egypt sinks into insignificance when
compared with that required to complete this sculptured hill-temple in the
interior of Java.
GUNONG PRAU.—About forty miles southwest of Samarang, on a mountain
called Gunong Prau, an extensive plateau is covered with ruins. To reach these
temples, four flights of stone steps were made up the mountain from opposite
directions, each flight consisting of more than a thousand steps. Traces of nearly
four hundred temples have been found here, and many (perhaps all) were
decorated with rich and delicate sculptures. The whole country between this and
Brambanam, a distance of sixty miles, abounds with ruins, so that fine
sculptured images may be seen lying in the ditches, or built into the walls of
enclosures.
In the eastern part of Java, at Kediri and in Malang, there are equally abundant
traces of antiquity, but the buildings themselves have been mostly destroyed.
Sculptured figures, however, abound; and the ruins of forts, palaces, baths,
aqueducts, and temples, can be everywhere traced. It is altogether contrary to the
plan of this book to describe what I have not myself seen; but, having been led to
mention them, I felt bound to do something to call attention to these marvellous
works of art. One is overwhelmed by the contemplation of these innumerable
sculptures, worked with delicacy and artistic feeling in a hard, intractable,
trachytic rock, and all found in one tropical island. What could have been the