CHAPTER III

THE DIËNG

Where Silence undisturbed might watch alone, So cold, so bright, so still.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, _Queen Mab_.

Where five residencies--Samarang, Pekalongan, Banyumas, the Bagelen and the Kadu--meet between two seas, the wonderland of the Diëng links the eastern and western chain of volcanoes which are the vertebrae of Java’s spine. The Diëng plateau, the first part created, as tradition goes, and destined to remain longest above water in the island’s final destruction and submersion, is nothing but a huge crater. Nature, in her most mysterious mood, exercises here a charm of a peculiar character, well expressed by the name, according to the Javanese derivation from _adi aëng_, _i.e._ marvellously beautiful.[22] The temples in this region belong to the oldest and finest if by no means the largest of Java. The discovery of a stone with a Venggi inscription has led to the conjecture that the Hindu settlement to which we owe them, originated from the Priangan; other indications point to immigration directly from Southern India. However this may be, the dates ascertained (one in an inscription reproduced by me in 1885 for further examination at Batavia, leaving the stone in the place where I had found it) from 731 Saka (A.D. 809) on, witness to the lost civilisation of the Diëng having reached its apogee at the time the Abbassides flourished in Baghdad and the Omayyads in Cordova. How it rose, declined and fell, we do not know. For four centuries its memory lived only as a fantastic tale, the Diëng remaining utterly deserted, a wilderness of mountain and forest, inhabited by devils and demons of the Khara and Dushana type.

Resettled since about 1800, its villages increase in number and size, and its wild animals, big and small, disappear gradually, though the tigers are still troublesome, evincing a growing disposition to vary their accustomed fare with domestic kine and sheep. The sombre woods are gone and efforts at reafforestation gave so far no perceptible results. The ground yields abundant crops of cabbage, onions and tobacco, in which a lively trade is done with Chinese middlemen, who buy for the merchants at Pekalongan, whence the product is shipped to larger centres of trade. These middlemen congregate principally at Batoor, a prosperous village, where travellers to the Diëng, arriving from that side, will appreciate the hospitable disposition of the _wedono_, the native chief of the district. Many a one has been entertained under his roof, looked down upon from the _palupooh_ (split bambu) walls by the Royal Family of Great Britain and Kaiser Wilhelm in chromolithographic splendour, while discussing a substantial lunch or arranging for sleeping accommodation if too tired to push on, or desirous of visiting the Pakaraman, the valley of death, at break of day when the uncanny manifestations of that place of horror are strongest. Another source of income for some of the Chinamen of Batoor and their henchmen of the Diëng is opium smuggling. The geographical position, commanding access to five administrative divisions of the island at once, lends itself admirably to that lucrative business. And if the smugglers cater to a low vice, they can advance an excuse logically unanswerable by those in authority who punish them when caught: they satisfy but a demand, in competition with the Government that created it, introduced the drug and encourages its use, artificially whetting a depraved appetite and demoralising the children of the land for the sake of more revenue.

Often though I went up to forget the cares of exacting duties in happy holidays on the Diëng, trying the different approaches, the impressions of my first ascent in October 1885 are freshest in my memory. Starting from Wonosobo, I preferred to a more direct route the roundabout way via Temanggoong, spending a day on the road between the twin volcanoes Soombing and Sindoro, enjoying the views to right and left, every new turn disclosing new wonders: mountain slopes basking in the warmth which radiated triumphantly from a sky of dazzling brightness, valleys of perfect loveliness losing their brilliant hues in the shades of evening as if a curtain fell between the world left and the world entered. The following morning early I rode from Temanggoong in a thick mist which, rolling away before the sun, uncovered a landscape more and more rugged as I passed Parakan and Ngadirejo, but always more charming, a feast to the eye. Near Ngadirejo the _chandis_ Perot and Pringapoos claimed my attention. Built for the worship of Siva, his _sakti_ Doorga and their eldest son, they offered a sad spectacle of decay, the former crumbling away in the baneful embrace of a gigantic tamarind, one of whose branches rose from the midst of the ruin straight up to heaven, overshadowing Ganesa, the conqueror of obstacles, in his meditations; the latter holding an image of Siva’s _vahana_ or _nandi_, the bull, symbol of his creative power, still an object of veneration as the _boreh_ indicated, the walls of the temple being decorated with splendid bas-reliefs representing a scene from Javanese history or mythology, analogous to the rape of the Sabine women.[23] Farther on, surprise succeeding surprise, lies Joomprit, another delicious spot, sanctified by a holy grave, at the source of the Progo. The water, gushing forth from the mouth of a cavern and trickling down its sides, is immediately lost to sight in a declivity among the ferns. Curious monkeys herd round, led by their brawny chief, imperious like Hanoman, born from the wind, swinging through space, commanding the simian army of Sugriva: they constitute one of the few colonies of sacred apes which form a living link with the Hindu epoch; that of Gaja Moongkoor on the Diëng has ceased to exist.

From Joomprit on, it was pretty steep climbing to a point where, at a sudden turn, I beheld the lowlands, far beneath the clouds gathering round me, fair plains resting under their hazy veil of midday repose, calm and undisturbed. Drinking deep of the invigorating mountain air, I noticed the red cheeks of the women and girls who returned from market in little groups. After descending to the tea-plantations of Tambi, the clambering up began again, pretty hard for my pony, to which I gave an occasional rest, looking back over hills and valleys as they dissolved in soft-melting tints, impressing the beholder with a sense of eternal light in limitless space. Wonder akin to awe seized me when, panorama-like, a landscape of silent grandeur, quite different from the graceful majesty of the rose-gardens of Wonosobo and the palm-groves of Temanggoong, unfolded itself. I was on the Diëng plateau. Notwithstanding the late hour, my admiration of the scenery having made my progress slow, I could not resist the temptation to dismount and follow the trail which led me down to the source of the Serayu beside the road, and pay my compliments to the shade of stalwart Bimo by way of introduction to the regions resounding in its temples with his exploits and those of other worthies sung in the _Brata Yuda_.[24] Nor indeed only in its temples: this same delightful retreat commemorates Bimo’s prowess according to a legend which in its astonishing account of his supernatural virility cannot be repeated. Enough to say that Arjuno, making him dig up the _toog_ Bimo, on the advice of Samār, the wily, was the first, by determining the course of the Serayu, to direct the water from the mountains of Central Java to the sea, therewith obtaining the realm of Ngastino. And whoever takes a bath, alone and at night, in the water springing from mother earth under the _pohoon chemeti_, the weeping willow of Bimo’s fountain, will have no occasion for certain elixirs largely advertised in daily and weekly papers, will retain youthful vigour into hoariest age.

It was dark when I arrived at the _pasangrahan_, the Government rest-house, received first by a shaggy, plumetailed dog of the Diëng variety, suspicious of strangers. Her name proved to be Sarama, suggesting classical associations not sustained, I am sorry to record, by her master, mine host, a Swiss, retired from service in the Dutch colonial army and put in charge of the place. Speaking innumerable languages and every one of them as if it were a _lingua franca_ composed of all the others, he showed me my room, took orders for my supper and made me comfortable, the broad, perpetual smile on his honest face illumining our polyglot conversation. Alas! Wielandt is no more. Indra, who knows men’s hearts, has certainly assigned to this diamond, more polished, presumably, in its celestial than in its former terrestrial state, a worthy station among the jewels of the city of bliss, Amaravati. A man of family instincts, good Wielandt left several daughters, at the time of my visit of initiation extremely shy little girls; and a son, then Sinjo Endrik, the obliging and attentive, ever ready to act as a guide to and otherwise to assist his father’s guests on their excursions, now Tuan Endrik, his father’s successor in the _pasangrahan_, while one of his brothers-in-law keeps a small, private hotel, opened to meet the increasing influx of sightseers and seekers of health. The Diëng plateau, especially in the dry season, would be an ideal site for a sanatorium. The sufferer from the debilitating heat on the coast in the enervating conditions of a continuous struggle for the next dollar or official preferment with fatter salary, may find there rest and a cool climate. Going to the bath-room before setting out early on some expedition, I have often found miniature icicles pendent from the _panchuran_, the water conduit, and riding off, have often heard, in crossing a puddle, the thin coating of ice crackle under the hoofs of my pony. Sometimes, at sunrise, the few remaining temples stand out white, the whole plateau being covered with frost, which makes a strange impression on one who but the day before yesterday sweltered in the fiery furnace of, for instance, the Heerenstraat at Samarang.

Waking up the morning after my first arrival, feeling cold, though the scene my eyes met was not quite so severely wintry as that just described, my dreams seemed to continue in reality. I beheld a tranquil plain different in its bright serenity from everything I had so far seen anywhere else, the Bimo temple rising to the left and the Arjuno group to the right, sharply outlined against the hills and the sky, their dark-gray colour in wonderful harmony with the verdure of earth and the blue expanse of heaven. One moment they appeared near in the clear atmosphere as if I could seize them with my hand, and then again very, very far, never to be approached. A vapour, clinging to the slope of the Pangonan in the direction of the Kawah Kidang, reminded me of the tremendous cosmic energy entering into the composition of this soothing stillness, this tonic for the sick and worried, with the certainty of annihilation as final pledge of freedom. Once a lake of seething lava, the plateau lies enclosed by the tops of five mountains, the Prahu, Sroyo, Bismo, Nogosari and Jimat, 2050 metres above the level of the sea; the Pangonan and Pagar Kandang are old eruptive cones, formed of the mud and sand thrown out, which accumulated at their bases and raised the surrounding ground. The plateau in its narrower sense is now a flat stretch of turf, in places, especially in the middle, a morass, called the Rawa Baleh Kambang for its northern, and the Rawa Glonggong for its southern part. Ruins have been found everywhere in the plain and up the slopes of the hills, even up to the summit of the Prahu. Here stand stone posts in a row, used by Arjuno, according to the legend, to tether his elephants, while his cows, after grazing on the Pangonan, were corralled for the night in the hollow of the Pagar Kandang, lit. “fence of the cattle-pen”; there, as in Diëng Kidool, layers of ashes among the slags and other debris, mark the situation in the past of the burning-grounds, which yield a steady harvest of bronze and gold finger-rings, bracelets, anklets and other objects of personal adornment. Ancient aqueducts, walls, staircases, foundations of secular buildings, clustered round the temples, remains of an important religious centre, so various and rich that Junghuhn did not exaggerate when calling them inexhaustible, suggest the existence, once upon a time, in those mountain wilds, of a Javanese Benares, minus the Ganges but plus a setting of unceasing volcanic activity, which demolished it by a sudden, violent outbreak. Such suggestions need only the seconding of one of the learned to be utterly ridiculed by his equally learned brethren of an opposite school.... We will let the matter rest at that and simply enjoy the actual calm of a landscape evidently exposed to destruction at the shortest notice, of nature recuperating from outrageous debauch.

Voices solemn and sweet summon to close communion with the power behind those manifestations, the universal soul of things human and superhuman, infernal and divine. One look more at the strip of turf which clasps the mysteries as a girdle embossed with gems, the Arjuno and Bimo shrines, shining in the splendour of early morning,--we shall return to them after our stroll of orientation. In the _dessa_ Diëng Wetan, close to the _pasangrahan_, is, or rather was, the _watu rawit_, a wall constructed of big blocks of stone, two portions of which still exist with a narrow staircase, hewn on a smaller scale, leading to the coping. The structure, largely drawn upon for building material, goes also by the name of _benteng_ (fort of) Buddha, an appellation incompatible with the Sivaïte origin of Diëng architecture and a contradiction in terms besides, considering the character of Gautama’s teaching; but in native parlance everything connected with the Hindu period is referred to as belonging to the _jaman buda_, while the expression _agama buda_ includes every pre-Muhammadan ancestral religion. Via Patak Banteng, Jojogan and Parikesit the _dessa_ Simboongan may be reached, until recently the highest in Java (2078 metres). Founded in 1815 by the grandfather of the present _lurah_, or chief of the village, its inhabitants, on whose stature and colour of skin the cool climate has had a visible influence, are very prosperous, their principal occupation being the preparation of a hair-oil from the seeds of the _gandapura_ (_Hibiscus Abelmoschus_). Simboongan lies on the west bank of Telaga Chebong, one of the many lakes which add to the indescribable charm of the Diëng, some possessing uncanny echoes, some being yellow and sulphurous, some of ever changing hue, some of crystalline clearness and stocked with goldfish, while the marshy shores are a favourite haunt of _meliwis_, a kind of duck much prized as food and becoming correspondingly scarce. Proceeding to Sikunang we get beautiful views in the direction of Batoor, hidden among its Chinese graves and orchards as in an airy robe of white and green; along the mountain rills which hasten impetuously to the valley of Banjarnegara, meeting in the radiance of the sun’s promise for union with the sea; down to the ricefields of Temanggoong, resplendent at the feet of the high mountains which keep guard over the Kadu, a paradise dominated by the sister volcanoes Soombing and Sindoro, a joy to behold.

Passing Sikunang and turning round the Gunoong Teroos, a spur of the Pakuojo, we notice some trachyte steps, the head of a staircase made for the convenience of pilgrims from what is now the residency Bagelen, to the city of temples, an ascent of five thousand feet. Over a long distance, following the course of the river Lawang, that gigantic roadway can be traced far below Telaga Menjer by stones left in holes from which it was not easy to remove them for building purposes. Another of these _ondo buda_ on the north side of the plateau, served the pilgrims coming from what is now the residency Pekalongan, via Deles and Sigamploong, and disappeared in the same manner. Descending, a smell of sulphur announces a lion of the Diëng of a less innocent, in fact of a decidedly satanic aspect: on this soil always the unsuspected turns up, the remains of an ancient civilisation forcing themselves upon our attention together with impressive reminders of the subterranean forces which extinguished it. From a number of cavities on the slope of the Pangonan, bare of vegetation, a picture of desolation, noxious vapours rise and bubbles of mud are blown forth and burst with a rumbling noise. High above the rest works the Kawah Kidang, the deer-kettle, spouting and growling, throwing the hot liquid round with relish, and it is advisable to keep her well to leeward on her days of gala, for she changes frequently her aim and her mood, an index of Kala’s disposition when stirring the bowels of the earth. Being the pulse of the Diëng, so to speak, she is regularly excited to fiercer exertion by the rainy season, differing also in this particular from the Chondro di Muka, her rival near the Pakaraman, with whom she has been confused even by geographers of name, greatly to her disparagement since she commands a considerably wider sphere of influence, not scrupling to encroach upon the domain of her neighbours by moving about. Wherever one pokes into the ground within her sphere of action, the steam rushes out and seething puddles are formed; it is wary walking and the wise will take warning from the foolhardy Contrôleur whose curiosity prompted him a step too far: sinking through the upper crust into the boiling mud, he had his legs so badly burnt that he died of the consequences and was buried at Wonosobo instead of marrying his Resident’s daughter at Poorworejo.

With its mofettes, solfataras, steam-holes, mud-geysers, sulphurous lakes, its treacherously opening and closing chasms,[25] last but not least its notorious valley of death,[26] the Diëng is the region above all others in volcanic Java, of miracles that expound the antagonism between fratricide life and death on our turbulent planet, which continuously prepares for or recovers from spasms of generative destruction. One of these spasms, on a grander scale than usual in the short span of human history, was the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883; which raised and submerged islands, shaking and altering the Straits of Soonda, a resultant tidal wave razing the towns of Anyer and Cheringin. The Diëng, some three hundred miles off, responded faithfully, as might have been expected, the Kawah Kidang roaring and splashing mud furiously, the wall of the crater-lake Chebong cracking in several places, so that part of its water, instead of flowing through the old channel, now seeks its way through the fissures thus created, remunerative tobacco-fields being transformed into swamps. Such disasters preach an eloquent sermon on the text, hewn in stone by the builders of the temples here erected to Siva as Kala, the Overthrower, and, transmitted with the wisdom of ages by a later religion, happily expressed by the German poet:

_Was hilft es Menschen seyn, was liebe Blumen küssen, Wann sie sind schöne zwar, doch balde nichts seyn müssen?_[27]

The news that a troop of strolling players had arrived, dispelled, however, ideas of that sort, unpalatable truth never proving successful against the pleasurable excitement of the moment. They were going to perform at the house of the reputedly wealthiest man of the plateau and not the less highly considered by his neighbours because caught redhanded, not once but repeatedly, in handling the forbidden, as I heard afterwards. Living near one of the enclosures traditionally associated with the pyres which were extinguished when the Hindu priests deserted their altars, he gave the _ton_ to the upper ten of Diëng society, “disporting like any other fly” unterrified by daily manifestations of cosmic potency. Surrounded by his _ganadavatas_, gods of the second rank, he welcomed me to the show. Mounted on sham horses, the actors delighted their audience with a sham battle which soon became a single combat between two valiant knights, encouraged by masked clowns, funny yet exquisitely graceful in their movements: the _savoir vivre_ of this people is perfectly matched with their elegance of carriage and correctness of speech and innate propriety of demeanour. The comedians’ stage-properties did not amount to much and their inventive genius shone the more brilliantly: a tiger (for a hunt of his highness our common uncle[28] followed the joust) was improvised with jute bagging and two pieces of wood, representing the jaws, snapping ferociously, perhaps a compliment to the _orang wolanda_ present, his biped equivalent in native estimation, as already remarked. Or an allusion may have been intended to local events: not longer than a week before, Paman had tried to force Wielandt’s stable, cooling his wrath, when baffled, on Sarama’s pups.

So much for my recollections of the histrionic exercises on the Diëng, and now about the temples! If Thomas Horsfield, in his narrative of the tour he made through the island between 1802 and 1807, mentioned the so-called Buddha-roads, it was Raffles who sent Cornelius, Lieutenant in the Corps of Engineers, to survey the architectural remains on the Diëng plateau proper, which the earlier traveller had not visited. According to the official account of his mission, kept in the library of the Museum of Antiquities at Leyden and still unpublished, he found whatever was standing of some forty groups, covered with clay and volcanic ashes up to nearly a fourth of the original height. Captain Baker, also commissioned by Raffles, worked three weeks on the Diëng after his examination of the ruins at Prambanan and the Boro Budoor. Junghuhn, whose observations date from 1838 to 1845, speaks of more than twenty temples in a wilderness of marshy woods. The woods have disappeared, the marshes hold their own and of his twenty temples only eight are left in a recognisable shape: five of them belong to the Arjuno group, including the so-called house of Samār; the best preserved is the Wergodoro or Bimo; the Andorowati and Gatot Kocho crumble away even faster than the rest. It has already been remarked that the Diëng structures belong to the oldest in the island, the _hanasima_ inscription, transferred to Batavia, furnishing a record of the Diëng civilisation which goes back to 731 Saka (A.D. 809). They are interesting to the Indian antiquary, wrote Fergusson, “because they are Indian temples pure and simple, and dedicated to Indian gods ...; what (they) tell us further is, that if Java got her Buddhism from Gujerat and the mouths of the Indus, she got her Hinduïsm from Telingana and the mouths of the Kistnah.... Nor are (they) Dravidian in any sense of the word. They are in storeys, but not with cells, nor any reminiscences of such; but they are Chalukyan.” Later learning accepts this statement only with cautious reserve. Whether Chalukyan or not, though, it is plain even to the unlearned that, erected to Siva, the Mahadeva worshipped principally in his character of Bhatara Guru, the divine teacher, to his _sakti_ Doorga and their first-born Ganesa, these temples, radiating the all-soul in the fierce glare of the midday sun, unfolding their secrets in the mellow moonbeams of night, partake fully of their mysterious surroundings, are integral portions of the ground they occupy, as may be said of all ancient Javanese buildings. Men of great power of imagination, deep-reasoning sentiment, the builders of these marvels, working their thoughts up to the sky, rescued for us the essence of the Diëng’s past existence. Their apprehension of universal happiness without beginning or end, sharpened by the desire to enjoy heaven on earth, lent immortality to the greatness of a people every vestige of whom would have disappeared but for their creative enthusiasm.

Prurient prudery, keen on the scent of the nasty, feels shocked at the _lingas_ and _yonis_ lying round, unable in its fly-blown purity to grasp the divinity of eternal love in the poem of generation, the union of the Deva and the Devi in causation and conception of life. The Philistine sees little more than rubbish, heaps of stone of no earthly use except as havens of refuge when out shooting _meliwis_ and overtaken by rain. In the Rawa Baleh Gambang we find five such clustered together, the _chandis_ Arjuno with the house of Samār, Srikandi (Ongko Wijoyo), Poontadewa (Trumo Kasumo or Sami Aji) and Sembrada (Sepropo), the chief hero of the _Brata Yuda_ being honoured in the midst of family and friends, including his funny and faithful servant. The _kala-makara_[29] ornament of the entrance to the _chandi_ Arjuno tells its tale; so do the empty niches designed for free-standing statuettes dissolved into space. Like the _chandi_ Srikandi it was once surrounded by a wall and another point of resemblance is the small rectangular building called the _chandi_ Samār, probably destined for secular purposes; of the Srikandi dependency, however, only the base can be traced. The _chandi_ Sembrada deviates somewhat in architectural plan and detail, and the ground-idea of the decoration can be studied to best advantage in the _chandi_ Poontadewa, finest of the group, exquisitely graceful on its high basement. Here again the _makara_ ornament prevails, budding into leaves and flowers, chiselled with a chaste appreciation of the esthetic principle of self-control: _In der Beschränkung zeigt sich erst der Meister_. Under the tapering roofs, fallen or falling in, which give the inner chambers an air of indescribable elegance, notwithstanding the cramped dimensions, images of holiness stood on pedestals; the images have been removed, heaven knows whither, and even the pedestals have fared badly at the hands of sacrilegious robbers digging for hidden treasure. Trumo Kasumo, supposed to keep sentinel over his _chandi_ (in bas-relief, north side), cannot but be scandalised at modern methods of research and modern behaviour in general.

The morass shows, in the dry season, the foundations of buildings, regularly arranged, lining streets which intersected at right angles over a considerable part of the Rawa Baleh Gambang. Their disposition has been advanced to support the theory that the population of the Diëng lived in wooden houses, built on those substructures of stone. The theory that the superstructures of stone have been carried away and the submerged substructures left because not so easy to get at, is just as plausible; perhaps a little more so. But whatever they were, temples and priestly or private dwellings of wood or stone, the officiating clergy, their assistants and the inhabitants of the city ministering to their fleshly needs, must have suffered a good deal from the dampness of the soil, the plateau offering already in those early days a field of rich promise for the experiments of hydraulic engineers. Among canals and ditches of less importance, the Guwa Aswotomo, a _cloaca maxima_ some twelve centuries old, still relieves the plain of its superfluous water. According to the legend, for nothing in this locality goes without at least one,--according to the legend then, the subterraneous passage was dug by Aswotomo on his expedition to the Diëng for the purpose of smashing the Pandawas, and nearing Arjuno’s residence he pushed his way up to the surface, from distance to distance, spying how far he had yet to continue his underground march. Descending into one of the peep-holes he made, in a season of extreme drought, I was able to crawl on to the next, through mud and debris which blocked my further progress and, unable to crawl out on a level fifteen or twenty feet lower, the watercourse sloping deeper and deeper down, I had to return to my point of ingress. The glory of this feat diminishes in the light of my knowledge of the circumstance that the Diëng plateau harbours no snakes,[30] save the decorative _nagas_ of temple architecture, and that a companion followed my movements above ground; had we been provided with ropes, we might have carried our work of exploration much further--but that must wait for another time. Of the rare plant which grows nowhere but in Aswotomo’s burrow and owes its growth to his copious perspiration while at his task, a fern possessing rare qualities, highly beneficial to him who pulls it out by the roots, I saw or, rather, felt nothing in groping my way through mire and darkness. Taking its course in a direction inverse to the mole-man’s initial tunnel boring, his Guwa begins at the Arjuno temples as an unpretentious drain and runs, for about half a mile, slanting toward the source of the river Dolok, where Junghuhn has set up two _lingas_.

The largest remaining and most beautiful temple on the Diëng is the _chandi_ Wergodoro or Bimo,[31] where the Pangonan rises out of the Rawa Glonggong. Notwithstanding Fergusson’s opinion, competent critics, deriving their conclusions from the horizontal lines of the roof-storeys, maintain its Dravidian or Southern Indian instead of Chalukyan character.[32] The niches with busts, which impress one as windows with people poking out their heads to see who is disturbing their quiet, suggest an approach to ideas further developed in the architecture of the plain of Prambanan. These curious persons look out only at the back and at the sides; the niches of the roof in front, over the projecting porch with _kala-makara_ ornament, are all empty. With its entrance facing east, in contradistinction to those of the other temples on the plateau, which face west, the _chandi_ Bimo possesses also notable peculiarities in the details of its sculpture: the double lotus of the cornice, lotus-buds and diminutive bo-trees of uncommon shapes, etc., while the upward tapering structural design displays a tendency to the slightly curved lines so dearly loved by Greek builders of the best period and adapted by the masters of early Gothic. The larger, lower niches have been despoiled; architraves and mouldings, festooned with foliage, flowers and seed-pods, divide the open spaces round about in a tasteful, sober manner, exciting without fatiguing the eye. From the fact that the decoration has not been completed, it is inferred that the sculptors were interrupted like their comrades at work on other monuments of Central Java, overwhelmed perhaps by the catastrophe of volcanic or martial nature, which depopulated the Diëng and coincided with the decline of the ancient empire of Hindu Mataram. The miraculous voice heard in the _chandi_ Bimo at dead of night, is silent on this point. All temples have their _shetans_, their bad, rarely good spirits, but the _genius loci_ of the Bimo excels the whole Arjuno crowd of them in efficacy and unfailing attention to the business of the seekers of advice, who arrive from far and wide to consult the oracle. Entering after dusk the gate of the Dread One, Kala, one with Rudra, the Roarer (the Kawa Kidang) near by, they have but to wait in prayer at the altar of the wondrous fane. A strange whisper, mounting like the odour of _melati_ and _kenanga_, tells them how to avoid the grim giant Danger if, on leaving, they are firmly determined to pursue the road of Good Desert.

The _chandis_ Gatot Kocho and Andorowati, falling into hopeless ruin, will soon be remembered only by their location, like the _chandi_ Parikesit, and it is a pity to think of those which left no trace at all, whose very names are forgotten. The state of affairs on the Diëng plateau, said Captain, now Major T. van Erp,[33] commissioned for the restoration of the Boro Budoor, leaves everything to be desired.... Villages came into existence and expanded. The inhabitants need stone substructures in building their houses and it is a matter of course that they use temple stones for that purpose; these are here much smaller than those of the monuments in the valley of the Progo and the plain of Prambanan, easily carried off and exactly of the right size.... This is the case of the spoliation of the temples on the Diëng in a nutshell. But it should be added that the natives are not the only offenders. So much, indeed, is implied in Major van Erp’s anecdote of a tourist who, examining the statuary adorning the grounds of the _pasangrahan_, a remarkable collection formed from miscellaneous loot, was invited to make his choice, the selected plunder to be delivered at Wonosobo in consideration of five guilders (a little over eight shillings). Many others had the same experience: numberless statues and stones carved into ornament have been appropriated by official and unofficial visitors to enrich museums and private collections. The appointment of Wielandt Sr., later of Wielandt Jr. as keeper of the _pasangrahan_ and of the antiquities in a region of archaeological interest equal to Pompeii and Herculaneum, without any funds whatsoever at their disposal, was only an incident in the continuous farce performed by the Dutch East Indian Government in all its relations to monumental Java up to the date of its laborious confinement of the Archaeological Commission--and after, as I shall have abundant occasion to show: a farce with consequences sad to contemplate. This applies to antiquities of every description. I turn to my diary: In different places, when digging, layers of ashes are found with charred human bones imbedded, and often trinkets. The natives, however, keep their treasure-troves secret for fear of the Government, which has decreed, and rightly, reserving its rights, that they may not sell without asking for and obtaining permission, but appropriates everything it hears of, at ridiculously low prices; a good deal is therefore sold and bought privately, notwithstanding the prohibition, even by officials; a systematic search never having been attempted, none the less fine trifles are unearthed and not always trifles either; last night, in the _pasangrahan_, some rings were shown to me; the owner, acting very mysteriously, produced at last a statuette from under his _baju_, about six inches of solid gold, beautifully wrought; its mate, equal in height, material and workmanship, he had been forced to sell, according to his story, for seventy guilders (less than £6); he wanted more to part with this one and it is certainly worth many and many times that sum; a change in the usual sordid Government practice would result in remarkable discoveries; recently, as Dr. L. told me, an inscribed stone was laid bare; when trying to have a look at it the same day, his informant told him that it had already been spirited away to prevent _susah_ (trouble); not much is necessary to be sentenced to _krakal_ (hard labour in the chain-gang) at Wonosobo.

It is true the Government sent some one to the Diëng, about fifty years ago, to photograph the temples as they then existed and, fortunately, the operator chosen was I. van Kinsbergen who, having made his début in Java as a member of an opera-troupe, developed a rare artistic sense in portraying the deteriorating outlines of the ancient fanes of the island. But there the matter rested until the complaints became too loud and in 1910 hopes were held out that steps would be taken to clear the ruins of parasitic vegetation, to drain the plateau by repairing the trenches and conduits still in working order since the Hindu period, incidentally to consider the possibility of restoring the sanctuaries not yet tumbled down. Names I heard in connection with this charge, make me tremble, writes a correspondent from Batavia, for a repetition of the vandalism committed in the plain of Prambanan, particularly the criminal assaults on the _chandi_ Plahosan and the _chandi_ Sewu, where a Government commissioner tried to arrest further decay on the homoeopathic principle: _similia similibus curantur_. Government solicitude for conservation proves often more destructive than simple neglect and, to take an illustration from the Diëng itself (others will be culled in the course of my observations, from a plentiful supply of official _bêtises_ and _bévues_, if not worse, in other localities), no sooner was general attention drawn to the enigmatic sign, described by Junghuhn and copied in his standard work from a rock between the lakes Warna and Pengilon, than it began to fade. Still quite clear in 1885 and up to 1895, despite its having been exposed to wind and weather during ten centuries (as surmised), it became fainter and fainter after that year, the process of a gradual loss of colour being duly noted at subsequent visits, until in 1902 I found it hardly distinguishable. To make up for the injury, a Contrôleur discovered, in 1889, supplementary tokens, not black but red, on the same Batu Tulis, or Watu Ketèq as the natives rather call it, “monkey-stone”, because they recognise in the figure recorded by Junghuhn, a likeness to the animal referred to. The smaller red letters, or whatever they were intended for, steadily increasing in number, appearing in places where I had never noticed anything before, I could not help suspecting the little shepherds who look so innocent and shy and hardly venture an answer when spoken to, of knowing more about this miraculous growth of a hieroglyphic inscription than their artlessness implied. For all their stolid mien, the natives are exceedingly fond of a joke and what greater sport can be imagined than to get the wise men of Batavia and of European centres of erudition by the ears, inciting them to raise always more learned dust in their efforts to decipher the undecipherable characters of an impossible language, each being cocksure of the infallibility of his individual interpretation? If, however, we have not to do with Kromo or Wongso his mark, the ghost of the Batu Tulis must be held responsible for, among the incorporeal inhabitants of the many caves in this neighbourhood, the dweller beneath the monkey-stone is of greatest occult potency and the good people who come from the adjoining lowland districts, even from Surakarta and Jogjakarta, to hear and translate the voices of the Diëng, repair hither, after partaking of good advice in the Bimo temple, to _sembah_ (make their salutation) before the entrance and ask _slamat_ (blessing and success) on their foreshadowed undertakings. Nocturnal devotions inside the cave of the Watu Ketèq on a lucky, right lucky, carefully calculated night, means untold wealth, and whoever dares to brave the resident sprite of darkness with that desire in his heart, as very few do, and still remains a poor devil, has doubtless skipped a word of power in muttering his incantations or disregarded some other essential observance.

To the lover of mountain scenery it is far more profitable to wait for dawn near the triangulation pillar and point of junction of four residencies: Samarang, Pekalongan, Banyumas and the Bagelen, with a fifth, the Kadu, only a few paces off, when the Eye of Day rises to divide the waters behind the mountains and the rack of clouds, and, to the north and the south of the island, the sea begins to glimmer in the azure and orange tints sent before to meet the melting gray of vanquished darkness. Following its course in all-compassing space, the soul enters into silent communion with nature, the divine creation of the supremely divine which teaches feeble men how to worship. Such moments bring a wholesome chastening of the flesh and as we descend, goaded by the fierce darts of the conqueror overhead who makes the earth wrap herself in her vapoury robe of protection, veiling the grand vision,--as we descend where the runnels descend that feed the Serayu and the Tulis winding its way to the Kawah Kidang, we find the plain with the _chandis_ one immense temple of adoration. The Vedic subtle body yearns to enter the sheath of prayer, to be moulded by its creator into the form fit for union with the spirit of the world; respiration becomes aspiration to the beatitude of manifest truth, of final rest in extinction of sin and shame and sorrow. So pass the hours in purification, in desire of a spark of the thought which breathes life into mortification of self. Then, at the passing of the light with the last flush from the West, in awe-inspiring stillness, the quivering stars lift their heads to watch the holy city of the dead; in clear-toned stillness, the night-wind moaning, the Rawa lamenting the lost civilisation of a lost religion whose symbols remain but are not understood, a mourning for humanity labouring in vain. The Diëng has been repopulated with a race between whose fanciful ideals, rooted in a forgotten past, and the rapacity of foreign rulers no lasting accord seems possible. Is it ordained that they, the thralls and the masters, shall continue in their present relations? Or will they disappear in their turn and, to quote Junghuhn, this mountain region revert to its free, natural state? Perhaps in the hour of upheaval native seers prophesy, when safety shall be found by none except to whom the Just Reckoner grants it. And mingling in one measure, which comprises the _jaman buda_, the time of bondage and the future, their dim notions of Mahadeva, the Beneficent Destroyer, and their conception of the dispensation of the Book, the leaders of religious exercise in the villages abide by their advice of submission until the true believers win the day, a day of glory for Islām, sure to arrive in the circular course of existence, which is nothing but Sansara, in attainment of Moslim brotherhood, which is nothing but Brahma Vihara, the sublime condition of love. Meanwhile, hearing is to be practised; haply it will lead to the comprehension of a lesson inculcated by each of the three creeds amalgamated in the Javanese mind and best expressed in the form borrowed from a fourth: The thing that hath been, is that which shall be; and that which is done, is that which shall be done,--or, in the version of the greatest poet of our own age: _Ciò che fu, torna e tornerà nei secoli._[34]

FOOTNOTES:

[22] Dr. A. B. COHEN STUART, however, derives Diëng from _dihyang_, the name found by him in old records.

[23] The remains of both these exquisite little temples suffered severely from a gale in 1907, which blew some of the surrounding trees down, their trunks and branches falling heavily and disjoining the still tolerably erect walls, the _chandi_ Perot, according to latest intelligence, being wholly destroyed by the toppling of the tamarind it supported.

[24] The _Brata Yuda Yarwa_ is the Javanese version of the famous Kawi poem _Bharata Yuddha_ which, in its turn, is founded on the Sanskrit epos _Mahabharata_. The war for the possession of Hastinapura is transplanted to Java; the Sanskrit proper names have passed into the nomenclature of Javanese history and geography; the Indian heroes have become the founders of Javanese dynasties, the progenitors of Javanese nobility.

[25] One of those chasms, near the _dessa_ Gaja Moongkoor, swallowed not merely a dancing-girl, a most common occurrence in Javanese legendary lore, but a whole village.

[26] A very active mofette which the natives call the Pakaraman, _i.e._ the “selected spot” where King Baladeva had his arms forged in the Brata Yuda war.

[27]

What is the use of living, of kissing lovely flowers, If, though they are beautiful, they must soon fade into nothing?

[28] The native’s deferential fear for the animal in question, makes him reluctant to pronounce its name, a liberty likely to give offence; referring to the lord of the woods, he speaks rather of his respected uncle (_paman_) or grandfather (_kakeh_), which satisfies, at the same time, his lingering belief in the transmigration of the soul.

[29] Siva as Kala, the destroyer with the lion’s or tiger’s head, Banaspati, devouring the sea-monster Makara: time finishing all things and alleviating all distress, in respect of which notion VOLTAIRE’S short but pointed story of _Les Deux Consolés_ may be profitably read.

[30] Query: Has St. Patrick ever been on the Diëng?

[31] Or Bhimo, one of Arjuno’s four brothers and avenger of the honour of the family on Kichaka, who had fallen in love with their common wife Draupadi.

[32] No buildings in the Northern Indian or Indo-Arian style have been found in Java.

[33] Reporting to the _Batavian Society of Arts and Sciences_, January 11, 1909.

[34] That which has been, returns and will return through all time.