Prambanan

Foundation

Prambanan was built by the Shaiva kings of central Java, usually linked with the Sanjaya line, in the mid-ninth century. An inscription dated 856, the Shivagrha inscription, records the foundation of a great temple of Shiva and the diversion of a river beside it, and is generally associated with Prambanan and with King Rakai Pikatan. The temple was built only a few decades after Borobudur and only a short distance from it, and some historians read it as a statement of Shaiva royal power after the Buddhist Sailendras.

The temples

The complex had three concentric enclosures. The outer two held more than two hundred small shrines in rows, of which few stand. The central court holds eight main temples. Three large ones are dedicated to the Trimurti: Shiva in the centre, about forty-seven metres high, with Brahma to the south and Vishnu to the north. Facing them are three temples for their mounts, the bull Nandi, the swan Hamsa and the eagle Garuda, and two smaller shrines.

The Shiva temple has four chambers. The main one holds a standing image of Shiva; the others hold the sage Agastya, Ganesha and Durga killing the buffalo demon. The Durga image is known locally as Rara Jonggrang, "the slender maiden", from a legend in which a princess, asked to marry a man she did not want, demanded that he build a thousand temples in a night, and was turned to stone as the thousandth when she thwarted him by trickery. The legend gives the complex its popular name.

The reliefs

The balustrades of the galleries round the Shiva and Brahma temples carry the story of the Ramayana in a continuous series of reliefs, from Rama's birth to the war in Lanka and its aftermath. The Vishnu temple carries scenes of Krishna's life. The reliefs are lively and detailed, with scenes of palaces, forests and battles, and are among the earliest monumental versions of the Ramayana in Southeast Asia. Since 1961 a Ramayana ballet has been performed on an open-air stage facing the temples.

Collapse and reconstruction

After the court moved to east Java in the tenth century, Prambanan was neglected, and an earthquake, probably in the sixteenth century, brought down much of the complex. Reconstruction began in 1918 under the Dutch and continued after independence; the main Shiva temple was completed in 1953. An earthquake in May 2006 damaged the temples, which were closed for repairs. The Buddhist temples of Sewu, Lumbung and Plaosan lie close by and are included in the World Heritage listing.