3475 Diana in her mandatory sarong.
3476a Ok I cheated. This is the photo of the post card I mentioned. No amount of explanation could have given you the proper understanding of the size and shape of the place. There are people on the monument but they are very small and hard to see even on the postcard itself.
3478 Borobudur from the Northwest. You can see the large stupa at the top and almost make out the tiers of the square part of the structure. At the bottom right you can see people climbing the stairs across the lower platform and up the stairs to Alley 1.
3485 In this picture of the tiers you can see the Buddha niches on all four of the alleys. The first one is at the right facing toward the left, 2, 3, & 4 are in a diagonal line along the left side of the picture facing a little to the right.
3485 This is the Buddha niches on the rear wall of Alley 1. You can only see the top row of the reliefs on that wall from the ground. The plain stone front wall of that alley blocks anything lower. None of the reliefs on the back walls of 2, 3, or 4 is visible until you enter the alley. You can see that one has his head and one doesn't. On the back wall of Alley 2 above that neither one has a head.
Too much going on to put this in one report, so here's Part 2
When we arrived at the Borobudur site we had to be outfitted with black and white sarongs before we were properly attired to enter. Some ladies tied on around each of our waists and off we went up the hill. I have to say that I don't think I'll ever adopt this look but it looks ok on Diana.
Borobudur is unique among Buddhist temples and the methods used to engineer and build it are a little mysterious. Exactly who built it and how it was designed and constructed are not known. When it was built is one of the few things that can be determined with some certainty. The Buddhist kings of the Sailendra Dynasty were ruling the area in 750-850AD. About that same time Hinduism was growing in the Indonesian Islands. Perhaps it was built to stop this advance or to raise the esteem in which Buddhism was held. In any event it didn't work. Ultimately the Hindus were replaced by Muslims and the site lay mostly forgotten for over 1,000 years.
Its initial abandonment may have come almost as soon as it was finished. In 850AD the Hindu Majapahit Empire from Sanjaya overthrew the Buddhist Ḉailendra Dynasty and that was the end of the story until Raffles dug it out of the jungle in 1814. Two centuries later the restoration continues.
Borobudur is the largest monument in the Southern Hemisphere and its carvings are considered to be the finest examples of Buddhist reliefs anywhere in the world. I took a picture of a postcard to get a bird's eye view of the structure.
It has five tiers but the first one is more of a platform supporting the rest of the structure. It has reliefs carved on the inside wall and no outside wall at all. The walkway here is very wide. To get to the next level you climb the stairs located at the center of each of the sides.
The four higher tiers have a high wall towards the center and a lower wall towards the outside, creating four 360 degree walkways or verandas, if you're from the Southern US. Here they call them alleys and number them from the bottom up.
In the lowest alley (Alley 1) the inside wall has two chains of reliefs, one above the other. The upper chain tells the story of the life of Prince Sidharta of India, the first Buddha. The lower chain tells Buddhist stories like 'The Turtle Salvaging a Sunken Ship' or 'A Mother Monkey Rescuing Her Offspring'. These stories are still popular in Indonesia today. The shorter outside wall of Alley 1 has two rows of carvings also but if they have a theme I don't know what it is.
At the top of the stairs to Alley 2 you pass under an arch. The same is true for the stairs to the Alleys 3 & 4. The inside and outside walls of these levels have only one chain of larger reliefs circling them and the inside walls have niches above the reliefs where there are carvings of seated Buddhas of many types (Alleys 3 & 4 have them on the outside walls but you can't see them from above. Seems like most of them are headless. Our guide says that most were broken by the terrorist bombing. There are 276 of them circling the three upper alleys.
When you go up the stairs from Alley 4 to the top (roof if you will) you enter a whole different system. While the base and tiers are squares with very slightly rounded edges, the top is a square that supports 3 round, concentric tiers with the actual stupa at the center of the uppermost and smallest circle. Each circle is about 5 higher than the larger one it sets upon and the diameter of the first one is larger than the square base would allow if the sides were not curved. I guess you could call the space between the square sides and the first 5 foot circle an alley as well but they don't. It's more of a transitional space, narrow at the walls centers and large in the corners.
The three circular platforms have small, about 11 feet tall, open stupas spaced around them almost at their perimeters. The largest has 32, the middle one has 24 and top one has 16. The openings in the 32 and 24 level are diamond shaped. The openings in the top level of 16 are square or rectangular. In the center the top level is the actual stupa. It's huge and does have a small center room as most do. Lore says that a golden statue was placed inside but was later stolen by Residen Kedu Hartman who replaced it with an inferior one. The Dutch engineer who was placed in charge of the site's renovation opened the stupa and removed the second statue which was moved to a museum where it is now known as The Unfinished Buddha.
It has been proposed that the lower level represents unregenerate man in his natural state. That's why it only has an inner wall; he's not yet on the path. The stairs connecting the alleys represent the man getting to a higher level. No arch over the set to Alley 1 as he is just entering the path. All the stories in the reliefs read in order if you go around the alley clockwise. (Funny how that theme keeps showing up. When you enter a Navajo Hogan (round house) you should always turn to the left and proceed clockwise, even if they've offered you a seat just to the right of the door.) After ascend the top stair connecting Alley 1 with Alley 2 you pass through a covered gate representing the attainment of a higher plane of existence and consciousness. The form of the space is square because it has turns and is not infinite.
This same process continues until you ascend to the top level. Here the space is square but as you climb the stairs to the first row of hollow stupas the space changes to round, signifying eternity and the attainment of Nirvana. If the interpretation holds up there must be three levels in eternity before you attain perfection.
As I mentioned earlier, not much is known for sure about the site and its symbolism. The scenes from Buddhist history and lore can be easily interpreted but not the symbolism of the shapes and numbers is all speculation. Why are there 276 Buddhas, why the number of hollow stupas in the three rings... The list goes on.
After doing the obligatory 3 laps around the inner circle right next to the real stupa we headed down the monument, down the hill and to the restaurant. There's a lot of busses here from the ship. Only two came partly by way of train and at least 6 came by bus the whole way. Even with boarding the train, looking at the train museum, etc. we still got to Borobudur before the bus only people. The roads apparently did not improve for the part of the trip we did by train.
The lunch was great! They had rice, of course, whole fried fish, beef satay (with peanut or chili sauce, or in my case both), stir fried vegetables, tempura shrimp (there's almost always shrimp of some sort on HAL lunches) and two deserts. One was a small (about 2/3 inch in diameter) green ball that had been rolled in coconut. The other was a long, slim cone shaped item tightly wrapped in a spiral of coconut palm leaf. The cone was about 6 inches long but the wrapping was at least a yard long when unwrapped. I don't know what the green ball was. I believe the outside was some sort of rice concoction like Japanese mocha. It was filled with a liquid that was probably a brown sugar mixture. The wrapped cone was easily identifiable once you tasted it. Inside was a brown substance much like very thick jam. I had no idea what it was, but the first bite screamed, sweet rice and coconut. I asked one of the staff about it and was told that they pound the sweet rice into a sheet mix in some coconut and then form it into the cone shape and wrap it in the leaf. Very light and refreshing. When I went up to ask about it the girl forced me to take another one. Easiest job she had all day.
The bus trip back to the ship, no train portion this time was every bit as interesting as the trip out. It was a long, hot, humid and totally interesting day.
We ate dinner in the Lido and that was the end of our evening out. I spent some time working on photos and Diana read and rested.
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