Java Journeys – Day 2: Borobudur and Prambanan

The sun rose over a cloudy landscape in the morning. While I could faintly make out the contours of Borobudur from my hotel, the iconic Merapi Volcano was hidden from sight, and would stay that way despite ever-bluer skies. I checked out at eight o’clock and was promptly picked up by my driver for the day: I had ordered a tour online for visiting the Borobudur and Prambanan temples a few days earlier. While the tour was advertised as being without a tour-guide, Didik proved savvy, helpful, and very good at English.

In between the originally scheduled visits, Didik fit in other little activities based on our conversations. When he learned that I had never seen a salak palm, he drove on until he could find a salak grove by the side of the road and showed me the thorny stems on which the fruits grow in their crumbly dry husks. Since Java is in dry season, the fruits were all small and desiccated, which did not stop Didik from acquiring a whole bagful from the grove’s owner. A little later, we stopped to look at some rice farmers, one of whom was riding a tractor through the ripe crop while others were thrashing the rice by flaying it against the ground.

I learned a number of things from our conversation, and my already forgetting half of them is testament to my bad memory rather than to any lack of knowledge on the part of my driver. For example, I learned that Indonesians are now importing roosters from Thailand for cockfighting and that they love to gamble. I also learned that the third salak harvest is always better than the first and the second, and that despite the quantity of rice Indonesia produces, it is actually a net importer. Black and white license plates are for privately owned vehicles, while yellow is reserved for public transport, green for the military, brown for the police, and red for the government. I could go on and on with these titbits, but this should be enough of an illustration.

The first stop on our journey was the small Mendut Temple, the oldest Buddhist temple in the area. Forming a straight line with the nearby Pawon Temple and Borobudur, Mendut is an important centre of Buddhist ritual. Near the ninth century structure one can also find the more modern Mendut Monastery, which features buildings and statues inspired by various religious sites across Asia: a somewhat subdued Buddhist Disneyland.

We arrived by the gates of Borobudur shortly after nine and picked up my pre-ordered ticket for the guided ascent. Ever since the pandemic, there are strict restrictions on the number of tourists allowed to climb to the top of the temple, and they can only ascend in guided groups of no more than fifteen people. Also, visitors are requested to wear slippers which they get to keep after the visit. The 90-minute tour was reasonably interesting, though a lot of the symbolism covered (the shape of the stupa, the Buddha’s hand gestures, etc.) were Buddhism 101.

Of course, it was necessary for the tour to go over the architecture and symbolism of Borobudur, which is built onto a hill in the shape of a massive stupa. It has nine platforms divided into three realms reflecting Buddhist cosmology: the world of desires, the world of forms, and the formless world. The ascent to the top symbolises one’s ascent to nirvana by following Buddhist principles. The Buddha statues along the way subtly reflect this journey. The hand gestures (or mudras) of the statues on the lower levels vary according to the cardinal directions the Buddha is facing, symbolising benevolence, meditation, courage, and the calling of the earth to witness. On the fifth level, however, all Buddhas symbolise reasoning and virtue, while the Buddhas at the very top embody the concept of dharma.

The one thing I was surprised to discover about Borobudur was that the famous perforated stupas all contain statues of the Buddha. Only two of them have had their tops removed to show what the statue inside looks like, which was a change implemented during the monument’s extensive renovation. Still far from its original state, Borobudur originally had 504 Buddhas, of whom 300 are damaged and missing. Several Buddha heads have emerged over the years in European museums, though only a few have been returned.

After lunch, we continued to Prambanan, the second-largest Hindu temple in Southeast Asia after Angkor Wat. Very much unlike the hill-like Borobudur, Prambanan consists of numerous tall towers, the tallest of which are dedicated to the trinity of Shiva, Vishnu, and Brahma, with the second row honouring their divine mounts, or vahanas: Nandi, Garuda and Hamsa. The temple was built only slightly after Borobudur as Hinduism regained the patronage and favour of Java’s rulers. Interestingly, it now stands within the same historical complex as three more (and slightly older) Buddhist temples: Lumbung, Bubra, and Sewu.