of Hindu descendants of the builders
of these religious houses and places of worship, but the Javanese are as
tolerant of various religious cults as the Chinese or the Japanese, and
the visitor need not be surprised to find native visitors making what
appears to be a pilgrimage to some particular shrine.

Mr. Crawfurd found barren women, men unfortunate in trade or at play,
persons in debt and sick persons propitiating the Goddess Durga,
"smeared with perfumed unguents or decked with flowers." This worship,
too, was not confined to the lower orders. His Highness the Susuhunan
when meditating an unusually ambitious or hazardous scheme made
offerings to the image.

These temples are built of a hard dark and heavy species of basalt, the
chief component of the mountains of Java. The stone is usually hewn in
square blocks of various sizes, as is the case with the Boro Budur. The
respective surfaces of the stones which lie on each other in the
building have grooves and projections which key into each other as in
the best masonry work to-day. They are regularly arranged in the walls
in such a manner as to give the greatest degree of strength and solidity
to the structure, and nowhere is cement or mortar utilised. There are no
huge pillars or single blocks such as may be seen in other prehistoric
edifices, and neither in boldness of design nor imposing grandeur have
the temples presented any difficulties to the builders. There is nothing
upon a great scale, nothing attempted outside the reach of the most
obvious mechanical contrivance or the most ordinary methods of common
ingenuity. The chief characteristic is the minute laboriousness of the
execution. Nevertheless, the temples excite the imagination, and send
the thoughts back to those primeval days when men sought to express
their religious feeling through these elaborate monuments of hewn stone.

The Tjandi Kalasan, one of the most beautiful of the temples, is the
only ruin in Central Java of which the exact date of construction has
been learned with any degree of accuracy. This was ascertained from a
stone found in the neighbourhood, inscribed in nagari characters. Two
versions of the inscription were made--one by the Dutch scholar, Dr. J.
Brandes, and the other by the Indian, Dr. R. G. Bhandarkar.

Dr. I. Groneman makes use of both versions to compile the following:--

"Homage to the blessed (or, reverend) and noble Tara.

"May she,--the only deliverer of the