Seeing the Sites... World Heritage Sites that is

Following Field Fellowship in mid-October we took some time visit some of the amazing historical sites in this part of Indonesia. We went to Borobudur and then to Prambanan. Both are temples from many centuries ago that are still standing today. I had done readings about and studied both of them in language school, so it was fun to see what I had read about in-person. Here are a few pictures from the day...

Borobudur is a Buddhist Temple that was built in the 9th Century

There are nine platforms. The bottom six are squares and the top three are circles

You can climb some very steep and uneven stairs to the top. I only made it to the 3rd level though :)

Borobudur contains approximately 2,670 individual bas reliefs, some that tell a story and others depict life in Java at the time it was built. 

There were also over 500 statues and reliefs of Buddha originally. Unfortunately, over 300 of them have been damaged or stolen. They are all essentially the same except the position of the hands (mudras) representing the five positions - north, south, east, west, and zenith. 

A view of Central Java from Borobudur

 Then in the afternoon we moved on to Prambanan Temple... 

Prambanan is a Hindu temple constructed around the 9th & 10th centuries and the compound originally consisted of 240 temples. 

There are three large temples dedicated to the gods, Shiva, Visnu, and Brahma

There are also several medium temples and almost two hundred small ones but many have been destroyed over the years, in the past by looters and more recently by earthquakes and volcanoes. 

The temple is adorned with panels of narrative bas-reliefs telling the Hindu epic, Ramayana and Bhagavata Purana. 

All in all it was quite the day! Seeing such history in-person was amazing. It is hard to imagine how these places were built without the use of modern equipment. It was also fascinating to me how the different kingdoms and religions that have come through Indonesia each leaving their mark on this land.