and metal. It was during this Central Javanese period
that the Buddhist monument BOROBUDURwas erected
(ca. 800–830). Few Buddhist monuments have been
studied as extensively as Borobudur. It is an enormous
structure, measuring 370 feet square and 113 feet tall.
Built over a small hill, it consists of millions of cut vol-
canic stone blocks that rise like a pyramid in four
square and three round terraces. There are 1,300 relief
panels that illustrate a series of Indian texts, including
jatakasand life stories of S ́akyamuni Buddha from the
LALITAVISTARA. Placed in niches and in stupas are 504
life-size Buddha images, each cut in the round. In ad-
dition, about 1,472 small stupas, 72 large perforated
stupas, and an enormous single closed stupa at the top
decorate the structure.
A Mahayana monument, with perhaps tantric as-
pects, Borobudur has defied any single interpretation
of its meaning and use. As with the Dong Duong Bud-
dhism and art mentioned above, or the Dvaravatbud-
dhas on flying figures, Southeast Asian Buddhists at
Borobudur developed a type of Buddhism that was lo-
cal and unique. Unlike East Asian Buddhists, South-
east Asian Buddhists did not in the ancient period
translate Indian texts into local vernaculars, nor, as far
as we know, did they produce their own Buddhist texts.
They used the Indian texts in the original Sanskrit or
Pali. The result is that we have Indian texts but South-
east Asian art, art that is Indian-related but consistently
local in style and iconography. In short, we often have
no way to know the extent to which local understand-
ing is hidden under the Indian guise.
There are other important Buddhist monuments in
Central Java. Candi Sewu, which probably dates to the
end of the eighth century, was dedicated to the bo-
dhisattva Mañjus ́r. It had a central cella with four at-
tached directional subshrines, and was surrounded by
250 smaller shrines. This mandalic organization is seen
as well at Borobudur, with the organization of the Bud-
dha images into a seven-Buddha system differentiated
by their hand gestures (MUDRA) and directional place-
ment. During the Central Javanese period both Hin-
duism and Buddhism coexisted, with the complex of
Loro Jonggrang dedicated to S ́iva, Visnu, and Brahma
being constructed at about the same time as Borobudur.
During the Central Javanese period enormous
numbers of both Buddhist and Hindu images were
caste in bronze, gold, and silver. The closeness in style
and iconography that many of these metal images
shared with images from the Pala period (eighth to
twelfth centuries) sites in India has long been observed.
The Pala kings were among the last major patrons of
Buddhism in India, and it was under them that the
great Eastern Indian monastery complexes such as
Nalandaflourished. There is also inscriptional and his-
torical evidence for frequent interchange between
these monasteries and those in Indonesia.Sometime around the middle of the tenth century
Central Java appears to have been abandoned, and
artistic work ceased. The cause may have been the
eruption of the volcano of Mount Merapi. The Cen-
tral Javanese court moved to eastern Java, with a very
different type of art and architecture developing there
under several different kingdoms. By the sixteenth cen-
tury, Islam had become dominant throughout the In-
donesian islands, except in Bali.Buddhism continued throughout the Eastern Ja-
vanese period (tenth to fifteenth centuries), but it was
not as important as S ́aivism. Tantric beliefs and ritu-
als became paramount in both Buddhism and S ́aivism,
and the two religions blended in many ways. The Bud-
dhist KALACAKRArituals were performed, and the kings
were identified as S ́iva/Buddha after death. The images
in the temples in the forms of Buddhist deities, such
as Prajñaparamita, were intended to represent the
kings and queens after death when they became ab-
sorbed into the deity. Indeed, this use of images of
deities as “portrait” statues of both the god and the
royal person is what took place under Jayavarman VII
at Angkor at about the same time, and it can be found
in Champa as well. The Khmer, Cham, and Javanese
royalty used images of deities in a similar way, a prac-
tice probably from the earliest adoption of Indian-
related art.There is a corpus of Buddhist art found on the is-
land of Sumatra, but mainly at sites in what is today
the southern area of the Thai peninsula; this art is
loosely labeled as “S ́rvijaya” in style, with dates from
the seventh to thirteenth centuries. S ́rvijaya enters
history in the seventh century with several inscriptions
in Sumatra. At the same time the Chinese monk-
pilgrim YIJING(635–713) tells us that he spent several
years in S ́rvijaya, initially in 671 to learn Sanskrit on
his way to India, and then for two extended periods
from 685 to 695 (with a brief return to China in 689)
to translate texts and write his memoirs. S ́rvijaya con-
tinued to exist for almost five hundred years, and in-
scriptions on the peninsula mention it. The problem
has been to find it. The place Yijing lived appears to
be Palembang in Sumatra, but it has been only since
the late 1970s that any archaeological evidence has
been found there. Much of S ́rvijaya would have beenSOUTHEASTASIA, BUDDHISTART IN