of the
Hindu Trinity, together with Parvati and Brahma, were worshipped here
in their original character, and an exquisite statue of Lora Jonggran
(Parvati in her Javanese guise) remains enshrined in a richly-decorated
chapel, surrounded by dancing houris, inspired in their sacred measure
by the flute-playing of Krishna. A further instance of the mode already
mentioned by which sentiment survives dogma in the Malay races, is
shown by the fact that Lora Jonggran still receives the homage of
Javanese women. Flowers are laid at her feet, love affairs are confided
to her advocacy, and as the shadows deepen across the great quadrangle,
a weeping girl prostrates herself before the smiling goddess, and,
raising brown arms in earnest supplication, kisses the stone slab at
the feet of the beautiful statue, popularly endowed with some occult
virtue which the loosely-held Mohammedanism of a later day has failed
to discredit or deny. The temples of Brambanam were erected shortly
after the completion of that upper terrace in the great sanctuary of
Boro-Boedoer which marks the traditional epoch between Buddhism and the
later Hinduism, including Sakya Munyi among the _avatars_ of Vishnu.
The sacred trees and lions carved here on the walls of the temple
quadrangle, give place in the galleries to scenes from the great Hindu
epic of the Ramayan. The familiar form of Ganesh, the elephant-headed
God of Wisdom, looms from the shadows of a vaulted shrine; Nandi, the
sacred bull, stands beneath a carven canopy, and the great memorial of
a bygone faith contains the identical galaxy of gods found in the
Indian temples of the present day, for the thin veil of Javanese
thought is a transparency rather than a disguise, softening rather than
hiding the clear-cut outlines of the original idea. The "fatal beauty"
of the graceful waringen-tree has played an ominous part in the
destruction of the Brambanam temples, for the interlacing roots, like a
network of branching veins, make their devious way through crevice and
cranny, splitting and uplifting the strongest slab, wherein one tiny
crack suffices for the string-like fibres to gain foothold. Masks and
arabesques, fruit and flowers, fabulous monsters and sacred emblems,
encrust the grey balustrades and bas-reliefs of the noble stairways.
Roof and column teem with richest ornament, for Hindu art had reached
the climax of splendour when the great city, formerly surrounding the
monumental group of state