Borobudur Temple

This is a scholarly and up-to-date book on Borobudur, the magnificent and little known temple situated in the centre of Java, close to the Merapi and Merbabu volcanoes someforty kilometres from Yogyakarta.

It is particularly fitting that the author should be Dr. Soekmono, as no one better than he knows the temple to which a large part of his life as an archeologist has been devoted. And Unesco, having done so much to mobilize international assistance to save this masterpiece of our common cultural heritage is now publishing the book.

Dr. Soekmono traces the temple’s history and lovingly describes it as one who has become its vigilant guardian and the painstaking artisan of its restoration. Might one who is trying to enlist the world’s goodwill for its safeguard be allowed to say very simply what he felt when for the first time he had the good fortune to visit the most beautiful Buddhist sanctuary of this large, now Muslim, Indonesian island?

Borobudur - the mountain of the virtues - is first a landscape, the landscape which, over a thousand years ago, met the eyes of those who came on pilgrimage here to seek the inner peace to which all believers in the Buddha aspire.

It has hardly changed. In the distance, two volcanoes; one evermenacing, glows red in the night. All around, in the middle distance, a ring of mountains of dark stone, with crests of strange, sometimes almost human, shape. Built of this same volcanic stone, Borobudur emerges from a delicate green background of tropical vegetation. The external monument has often been described: ‘four square terraces surmounted by three circular terraces bearing seventy-two stupas and as many statues of Buddha, all dominated by a great central stupa. Dr. Soek-mono describes it with the emotion of an Indonesian and the science of an archeologist. Today the tourist takes a car from his Yogyakarta hotel, like any other hotel were it not for the scent of cloves of Indonesian cigarettes and the soft music of the Javanese gamelan. He goes first through Yogyakarta itself, crowded with industrious and smiling people on bicycles, then travels beside rice-fields, and across a river that has a bed of black lava.

In the semi-darkness of a first small temple, before a most moving statue of the Buddha, the tourist turns pilgrim in anticipation of his first sight of the sanctuary,looming suddenly ahead round a bend in an unmade road. But its external appearance is not the most remarkable thing about Boro-budur, which takes into its confidence the visitor who is willing to mount gradually, to walk round each of its terraces inhaling, one after the other, the beauty of its bas-reliefs - the most expressive recounting the life of the

Buddha - and the natural beauty which is here strangely mingled with the handiwork of man. Climbing by degrees to the top, today’s pilgrim, like his predecessors, becomes progressively imbued with calm and beauty and an unaccustomed inner serenity; and so the centuries perpetuate that which was intended by those who, in the ninth century, built this gigantic temple. Dr. Soekmono’s book, the work of a scholar and archaeologist, will appeal to anyone who, wherever he be, is tempted by this experience and wishes to prepare adequately for it.
Download

Jika Anda menyukai posting ini, silahkan menuliskan komentar Anda atau subscribe ke feed dan mendapatkan kiriman artikel selanjutnya ke feed reader Anda.

• Home
• inilah saya