Tantri Reliefs on Javanese Candi.

• Author: Brown, Robert L.

By MARIJKE J. KLOKKE. Verhandelingen, vol. 153. Leiden: KITLV PRESS, 1993. Pp. xiv + 323, 11 figures, 100 black-and-white illustrations. $35.

The Tantri reliefs of the title are scenes, carved in stone, depicting stories from (or relating to) those found in the Indian Pancatantra corpus of stories, animal fables usually teaching a moral lesson. These reliefs are on candis, or temples, in Java that date, beginning with two in central Java, from about 800 C.E. and end with a group of thirteen monuments in eastern Java that date from about 1340 to 1450. Thus, the reliefs' appearance is restricted to these two groups, among the many monuments in central Java, and to a short time frame. In addition, there is an odd five-hundred-year break between the two groups. These are the only instances in which such Pancatantra stories are depicted on monuments in South or Southeast Asia, making their appearance on the Javanese temples that much more intriguing.

Marijke Klokke's book is very helpful in sorting out the questions regarding these Javanese Tantri reliefs, and she supplies - in a careful, thorough, and scholarly way - answers or hypotheses for many of them. The book is divided into two parts. The first, in seven chapters and 152 pages of text, is her discussion of the reliefs. The second part, of about one hundred pages, is a very handy catalog of the reliefs themselves, each discussed separately and with a small illustration. These reliefs are numbered consecutively and arranged by monument, which in turn are arranged chronologically. The major monuments are shown at the end in ground plans with the placement of each relief indicated by its number. The discussion for each relief is extremely thorough, giving a list of references where it has been published before, a description, a suggested identification, and often a detailed analysis and comparison of textual sources and other reliefs.

The first part of the book is an introduction that lays out some of the major issues, most of which will continue to be a focus throughout the book, including most importantly the relationship of the reliefs to the textual sources. Klokke reviews the past scholarly literature that has dealt with the reliefs, and notes that her approach will be to consider the meaning of the reliefs in the context of the candis and, broadly, of Javanese culture, rather than to view each relief separately, as was very commonly done in the past. The second chapter is then devoted...