PRAMBANAN
 a
builder's yard of jumbled stone blocks, but the central edifices
have been largely restored to their original glory.
Prambanan consists of three major sanctuaries, one for each
member of the Hindu trinity: Candi Brahma, Candi Visnu and
Candi Siwa. Since Javanese Hinduism tended to make Shiva the
highest god and arrange the others around him, the 47 meter-tall
spire of Candi Siwa, in the center, is taller and more architecturally
perfect than the twin temples to Brahma and Vishnu which stand
on either side. An inscription commemorating its consecration
in A.D. 856 describes it as, "a beautiful dwelling for
the god." Inside the sanctuary stands an enormous statue
of Shiva in his fourarmed human form; since the normal iconography
would have represented him simply as giant penis, this figure
may also represent King Rakai Pikatan, who is believed to
have commissioned the temple complex.
In other chambers around Shiva are the pot-bellied sage Agastya,
Shiva's elephant-headed son Ganesha, and his wife Durga. In
local legend, Durga is Loro Jonggrang, a "Slerider Maiden"
turned to stone by a rejected suitor. "Even Europeans,"
notes a Dutch textbook from 1919, "come to ask the statue
of Durga for some favor or other, or for protection."
Today, flowers and other offerings can always to be seen at
her feet. Her Javanese name is sometimes given to the whole
temple complex. Opposite Candi Siwa is a smaller shrine with
a powerful statue of Shiva's mount, the divine bull Nandi.
The inner panels of the balustrade around Candi Siwa illustrate
the Ramayana epic in a series of monumental stone reliefs.
In them, Prince Rama's beloved wife Sita is carried off to
Sh Lanka by the demon king Ravana; but Rama manages, with
the help of the monkey general Hanuman, to free his beloved
from the demon's power. Prambanan is of timeless beauty. The
triple towers which were erected 11 centuries ago, remain
weirdly futuristic, providing a stunning backdrop for the
Loro Jonggrang Theater, an open-air stage where the famous
Ramayana dance performances are held on four consecutive moonlit
nights each month during the dry season.
The Prambanan group is also comprised of several other less
important Hindu temples, including the recently excavated
Candi Sambisari, which is small, was but perfectly preserved
by volcanic ash. However, none were built much later than
Prambanan. In the first half of the 10th century, King Sindok
transferred the center of power to East Java, where it remained
for the next 600 years. Then, in the 16th century, after the
fall of the last and greatest East Javanese state, Majapahit,
the island's historical center of gravity, migrated back to
the lands below Mt. Merapi. According to Javanese tradition,
this process culminated in the re-foundation of Mataram, this
time as an Islamic kingdom, by Kyai Gedhe Pamanahan. His son,
Senopati, initiated the imperial expansion which was to make
this second Mataram the last of Java's great indigenous states.
Senopati journeyed to the desolate south coast to meet with
Ratu Loro Kidul, the Queen of the South Sea, who promised
him the support of her spirit army. The beaches around Parangtritis
are still the center of the cult of this siren goddess, who
lures young men to their deaths by enticing them to swim in
her dark ocean. When the ruler of Yogyakarta is crowned, the
goddess is offered clippings of the sultan's nails and hair.
The coastline here has a windswept, restless beauty.
Senopati's
court was at Kota Gede, now virtually a suburb of Yogyakarta,
five kilometers southeast of the town center. His grave, and
that of his son Krapyak, who succeeded him in 1601, can be
viewed here, in a dark, flowerstrewn chamber - accessible
on Mondays and Fridays and subject to the wearing of respectful
Javanese clothing. The mausoleum was reconstructed after a
fire at the beginning of the 20th century, but its musty,
incense-permeated interior still reeks more strongly of the
past than any sunlit temple. In the quiet grounds is a pool
with a sacred albino turtle. Kota Gede is also a known center
of silversmithing.
Krapyak's son Agung is buried not with his father and grandfather
at Kota Gede, but in a spectacular hilltop mausoleum in Imogiri,
midway between Yogyakarta and the sea. Agung was the greatest
of Mataram's rulers, conquering Surabaya in 1625, besieging
Dutch Batavia in 1628 and 1629, and finally taking the title
of sultan in 1641. At his death in 1646 he was lord of all
of Central and East Java, and the greatest Indonesian conqueror
since the time of Majapahit. The burial place which he created
for himself reflects his glory. A great, sundappled stairway
of 345 steps leads to a fortress-like edifice which contains
not only Agung's own black tomb, but also the tombs of all
his successors. After the sultanate split in 1755, both Yogyakartan
and Surakartan rulers continued to be interred here, although
in separate wings of the building. The tombs are still objects
of veneration and may only be viewed by the public on auspicious
Mondays and Fridays.The city of YOGYAKARTA is a unique phenomenon
in Indonesia . Apart from being the cultural capital and foremost
tourist destination of java "YOGYA'(pronounced Jogya)
is a city of more than half a million people, a major administrative
center, the site of more than 40 universities and the for
mer capital of the Republik of Indonesia .Yet its sophistication
comes deceptively cloaked in the simple garments of a giant
village.
Though
it stands amid a constellation of earlier royal sites, the
modern city dates from only the mid-18th century. The death
of Sultan Agung heralded a century of chaos and decline for
Mataram. Agung's son Amangkurat I was a tyrant who alienated
most of his vassals, with the result that his successor Amangkurat
11 (reigned 1677-1703) could only claim his throne thanks
to the Dutch, to whom the sultanate was now beholden. Three
"Javanese Wars of Succession" followed before stability
was restored in 1755, by the radical means of permanently
dividing Mataram into two kingdoms. Paku Buwono III and his
line were to rule Surakarta, while his uncle Pangeran Mangkubumi
became the first ruler of Yogyakarta under the title of Hamengko
Buwono, which is still home by his descendants.
SRI
SULTAN PALACE
 One
of the first deeds of Hamengku Buwono I was to order the construction
of the Kraton Yogyakarta, the palace which is Yogya's core.
This kraton is a city within a city. Thousands of people live
and work within its walls - batik makers, servants and guards,
as well as the musicians, jesters and polowijo or "weeds"
(albinos and dwarfs) of the sultan's retinue, and the royal
family itself. The central buildings, the first of which were
completed in 1757, comprise a maze of pendopo - open or semi-open
pavilions - which are separated by courtyards planted with
shady trees. The outer walls, each more than one kilometer
long and three meters thick, caused the Dutch much consternation
when they were added in 1785; but they did not prevent a thousand
or so British Indian sepoys from taking the kraton against
11,000 defenders in 1812, with the sole casualty being a Scottish
officer who was stabbed by a princess he was carrying away
as booty
Not surprisingly, that debacle was the end of the court's
independent military, which then accepted the superior power
of the returning Dutch and devoted itself to self-beautification
and the development of the Javanese arts. Although it seems
timeless, today's kraton is essentially the kraton of this
"theatrical" period, featuring opulent Indo-Dutch
furniture, oil paintings by the 19th-century Javanese artist
Raden Saleh, and several huge gamelan orchestras. Perhaps
it is this very element of artifice which gives the palace
its other-wordly atmosphere. The ninth sultan, who reigned
1939-88, brought the court down to earth just in time to secure
its future, supporting the republic in 1945-49 and even giving
over part of the palace to house the first independent Indonesian
university, Gajah Mada, now located in the north of the city.
Today, the kraton houses a museum and stages regular gamelan
and dance performance.
Taman Sari ("Fragrant Garden"), also known a.,;
the Water Castle. is even more fanciful. Located to the southwest
of the main buildings, this labyrinthine ruin was the opulent
pleasure palace of the first sultan. Ngasem, the adjacent
bird market, is built on the dry bed of an artificial lake,
across which Dutch visitors were once rowed, in gilded boats,
to a manmade island. Only the smaller, central bathing pools
have been restored; the rest is in an evocative state of tropical
decay.
Immediately in front of the kraton is the Alun-alun Lor, the
town's main square. It is here that fights between tigers
and buffalo were once staged for the entertainment and instruction
of European dignitaries; the tiger represented Europe, the
buffalo Java, and the steadfast strength of the buffalo seldom
failed to overcome the ferocity of the tiger. On the west
side of the square is the very Javanese Mesjid Agung (Grand
Mosque), which was built in the form of a pendopo. Three times
a year, during the garebeg festivals, the sultan takes part
in a spectacular procession from the palace to the mosque,
accompanied by flower bedecked heaps (gunungan) of rice, evidence
of his charity. The greatest of these events is Garebeg Maulud,
when the square seethes with performers and pedlars, and musicians
play on two ancient gamelan from the palace, for the entire
week leading up to the procession.
Not far north of the alun-alun is the original Dutch fort,
Benteng Vredenburg. In 1765, the first sultan agreed to build
a fortress for VOC troops in his city. However, despite his
industriousness in the field of pleasure gardens, and the
fact that the four-kilometer walls around his own palace were
supposedly built in two weeksflat, the sultan did not manage
to complete Vredenburg within his lifetime; Governor-General
Daendels finally put a firm end to the procrastination in
1808. Opposite the fort is Gedung Negara, the handsome 19th-century
home of the Dutch Resident. Further east, on JI. Sultan Agung
is the Paku Alaman, the palace of Yogya's junior royal house,
created by Raffles in 1813, as a counterweight to the court
of Hamengko Buwono, which he had just had occasion to storm.
The Paku Alaman, which is not open to the public, is a less
lavish version of the main kraton.
The British attack on Yogyakarta in 1812, ended the military
power of the Javanese courts proper, but it was not quite
the last stand of the aristocracy as a whole. In 1825, after
years of court corruption and intrigue, increasing erosion
of aristocratic privileges by the European government, and
several ominous natural disasters, a Muslim visionary and
scion of the royal family, Prince Diponegoro, raised a rebellion
against both the kraton and the Dutch which lasted five years
and cost more than 200,000 lives.
Retrospectively styled as a freedom fighter, Diponegoro is
one of the bestknown figures in Indonesian history. He was
raised in Tegalrejo, five kilometers northwest of the kraton,
where his residence has been reconstructed as the
Diponegoro Monument; with displays of the hero's relics and
realistic paintings of the war. In 1830, Diponegoro was finally
captured, 40 kilometers northwest of Yogya at Magelang, home
to yet another commemorative museum, Museum Diponegoro. More
than a century of oppressive peace followed, the rust en orde
(peace and order) of Dutch colonialism, described by one nationalist
of the 1930s as "the peace of death." When that
peace was broken at last, by Japan and the Indonesian revolution,
Yogya was once again at the center of the whirlwind as capital
of the infant republic from January 1946 until its seizure
by Dutch troops in December 1948. The Museum Sasmitaloka Jenderal
Soedirman celebrates the most important Indonesian military
hero of this time, an Islamic schoolteacher who, wasted by
tuberculosis, led the republic's armed forces from a litter,
which can be seen here.
Yogya's main street is J1. Malioboro, famous for its stalls
that offer souvenirs by day and food by night. Gudeg, a mild |
