tive chronicles require to be carefully
sifted, and to be supported by the record of the antiquarian remains,
which supply an unfailing basis for, at any rate, the main outlines of
the period. The oldest inscriptions are found on the west side of
Buitenzorg, on river stones, and at Bekasi, on the east side of Batavia;
they are written in Sanskrit characters of the oldest period, and, by
comparison with the inscriptions of British India, indicate the
existence of Hindu civilization in Java during the fourth and fifth
centuries after Christ. The oldest _dated_ inscription in Java (and in
the Archipelago) is one bearing date 654 of Saka (A.D. 732). This is now
in the museum at Batavia. It contains twelve verses in the Sanskrit
tongue, and is about four feet in length by two in width, and about ten
inches in depth.

The magnificent temple of Boro-Boedoer, of which Mr. Wallace[1] says,
"The amount of human labour and skill expended on the Great Pyramid of
Egypt sinks into insignificance when compared with that required to
complete this sculptured hill temple in the interior of Java," and which
will be separately described with the other religious monuments, was
probably erected in the eighth or ninth century. It marks the highest
point in the Hindu supremacy, and the time when the influence of
Buddhism was supreme. At any rate, we have the witness of Fa Hian, a
Chinese traveller, who visited the island in the fifteenth century, to
the effect that at this later period "the Brahmins were still very
numerous, but the law of Buddha was no longer respected."

[Footnote 1: "Malay Archipelago."]

The earliest European visitors tell us nothing of the two Hindu
kingdoms, Pajajaran and Majapahit, so celebrated in the chronicles. They
speak only of Sunda and its port Bantam; and they mention a certain
prince, Fatelehan, as completing the Mohammedan conquest in 1524.
Raffles, however, following the chronicles, focusses the overthrow of
the Hindu supremacy in the capture of the city of Majapahit in 1478 A.D.
In spite of the traditions which speak of a long period of fighting, it
is probable that the conversion of the Javanese to the new religion was
gradual and peaceable, being in the main the result of commerce. The
temples, the head-quarters of the old religion, show no traces of
violence. They were destroyed, says Dr. Leemans,[2] simply by
"carelessness, disuse, and nature," not by a sanguinary war. Long before
the Prince Fatel