Prambanan: Java’s Great Hindu Temples, and How to See Them
Seventeen kilometres from Yogyakarta, a group of ninth-century towers dedicated to Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma rises 47 metres above the plain. They were rebuilt stone by stone in the twentieth century, and the work goes on.
Prambanan stands about 17 kilometres north-east of Yogyakarta, on the boundary between the provinces of Yogyakarta and Central Java. It is the largest Hindu temple site in Indonesia, and the second largest in Southeast Asia after Angkor Wat. It was built in the middle of the ninth century, within a few decades of the Buddhist monument of Borobudur, about 40 kilometres away. UNESCO listed both in 1991.
The temples
An inscription records that the main temple was inaugurated in 856. The complex was probably begun by the king Rakai Pikatan and was dedicated to the Trimurti, the three great gods of Hinduism: Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver and Shiva the destroyer.
The plan is a set of three squares, one inside another. The innermost holds the eight principal temples. Three tall towers stand in a row, with Shiva’s in the centre, 47 metres high, and those of Brahma and Vishnu to either side. Facing each is a smaller temple for the animal the god rides: the bull Nandi for Shiva, the goose for Brahma and the eagle Garuda for Vishnu.
Around this core, the second square once held 224 identical small shrines in concentric rows. Most are still heaps of stone.
The reliefs
The balustrades of the three main temples are carved with narrative panels. Those on the Shiva and Brahma temples tell the Ramayana: the abduction of Sita by the demon king Ravana and her rescue by Rama with an army of monkeys. The Vishnu temple carries the story of Krishna. Inside the Shiva temple, chambers hold statues, among them the goddess Durga.
Local legend gives that statue another name. A princess, Rara Jonggrang, asked a suitor she did not want to build a thousand temples in one night. When he was about to succeed she tricked him, and he turned her to stone to complete the thousandth. The Javanese still call the site by her name.
Ruin and reconstruction
The court of central Java moved east in the tenth century and the temples were abandoned. Earthquakes later brought the towers down. A Dutch official reported the ruins in 1733, and they were surveyed in the early nineteenth century.
Reconstruction began in 1918 and in earnest in 1930. The method was anastylosis: a temple is rebuilt only if most of its original stones can be found and fitted together. The Shiva temple was completed in 1953, the Brahma temple in 1987 and the Vishnu temple in 1991. Only a handful of the small shrines have been put back. An earthquake in 2006 damaged the complex, which has since been repaired.
The Ramayana on stage
Since the early 1960s the Ramayana has been performed as a dance drama with gamelan on an open-air stage beside the temples, with the lit towers as a backdrop. In the dry season, roughly May to October, it is staged on the open-air stage on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, moving into a covered theatre in the rain and from about November to April, when the temple backdrop is not part of it. Dates should be checked before planning an evening around it.
For travellers
Prambanan needs two to three hours. The late afternoon is the best time: the heat falls, the stone turns gold, and the visit can run into the performance. The park also contains Sewu, a large Buddhist temple group a short distance to the north, which few visitors reach.
The site is about half an hour by car from the centre of Yogyakarta, with a commuter railway station and a city bus terminal near the gate. Access to the inner temples can be restricted for conservation, so check current rules. Borobudur and Prambanan can be seen on the same day, but two separate days are less tiring.
