In Praise of Prambanan: Dutch Essays on the Loro Jonggrang Temple Complex.

• Author: ROSKIES, D.M.
• Position: Review

In Praise of Prambanan: Dutch Essays on the Loro Jonggrang Temple Complex. Edited by ROY E. JORDAAN. Translation Series, vol. 26. Leiden: KITLV PRESS, 1996. Pp. vi + 253 + plates. HFl 50.

Roy Jordaan has been forging a name for himself as an historical anthropologist of medieval Java, and the volume under review, which assembles eight important articles--each strengthening our grasp of the topography of the field, many breaking new ground in the understanding thereof--is another feather in his cap. In Praise of Prambanan rescues from the condescension of posterity and for the benefit of an English-speaking lay readership the best of pre-war Dutch research devoted to interpretation of this famous site, whose existence and form attest so splendidly to the region's glorious past in its "classical" period, circa A.D. 775-900.

The collection is in two parts. The first consists of a general introduction to the site based on critical examination of the scholarly literature. A detailed "state-of-the-art" conspectus of publications on Candi Prambanan is here offered; these, it is plain, possess a remarkable degree of relevance, especially where dating of the monument and its religious matrix are concerned. The matter of historicity was of signal importance for these meticulous but now forgotten investigators--men whose powers of expression were accompanied by a confidence in judgment and a fastidiousness of method that elicit admiration, even--especially, perhaps--when they are seen to have fatten into error. Choice and logic of location; indigenous nomenclature; provenance of the building vernacular; materials used in construction; methods of conservation--all receive comprehensive attention, in what, cumulatively speaking, is tantamount to a cadastral survey.

Who ruled at Candi Prambanan? Which religious sects or cults took part in its fabrication? What were the political conditions of the age? These are the questions considered at length and in a revisionist perspective in part one. A long hard look is taken at the various theories advanced in explanation of the place occupied by site in the evolution of Hindu-Javanese architectural idiom. Much progress, certainly, has been made since the heyday of Dutch colonial archeology, but much, too, remains enigmatic and intellectually puzzling about this (with Borobodur) most magnificent of archaic Indonesian monuments. Apropos the many and obvious differences in style between central and east Javanese...