to India for religious education. They brought
back in their train artists, sculptors, monks, priests, and the
gorgeous paraphernalia then used in the ceremonial of Buddhist worship,
but the heart of the ancient faith was atrophied by the indifference of
the people, and the zealous attempt to galvanise a moribund creed into
fresh life failed even to arrest the progress of decay. National
thought, fickle as the wind, had turned from an impersonal philosophy
to the materialistic cult of Hindu deities, as the Israelites of old
hankered after the visible symbol of Isis and Osiris in the Golden
Calf. No definite creed succeeded in gaining a permanent hold upon the
wandering minds and shallow feelings of a race whose deepest instincts
reveal the fleeting fancies and inconstant ideas indigenous to a
sea-faring stock, imbued with the spirit of change and unrest. A
magical charm broods over the mysterious Temple, the materialised dream
of a mighty past rescued from the sylvan sepulchre of equatorial
vegetation, and restored to a vivid reality beside which the paintings
of Egyptian tombs sink into comparative insignificance. The seclusion
of the memory-haunted pile enhances the thrill of an unique experience.
Vista after vista opens into the world of long ago so graphically
depicted on the monumental tablets of the processional paths, while
type and symbol point also to the infinite future intensely realised by
Eastern mysticism. Mortal life was but a fleeting mirage besides this
vision of the life beyond. For the words "_Shadow_, _Unreality_,
_Illusion_," perpetually repeated by the yellow-robed monks on the
beads of the Buddhist Rosary were inscribed on the inmost heart of the
faithful disciple, who strove to attain that detachment from the world
of sense inculcated by the creed expressed on the hoary stones of
Boro-Boedoer.

BRAMBANAM.

The ruined temples of Brambanam memorialise that phase of Java's
religious history, when the altars of Buddha were finally deserted, and
Hinduism became the paramount creed of the fickle populace. An
archaeological report sent to Sir Stamford Raffles a century ago,
describes the remains of Brambanam as "stupendous monuments of the
science and taste belonging to a long-forgotten age, crowded together
in the former centre of Hindu faith." A rough country road leads from
the little white railway station, perched on a desolate plain, to these
far-famed temples. A brown village, shaded by