HINDUISM WAS INDONESIA'S MAIN RELIGION FOR 1,000 YEARS
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Hinduism was Indonesia's main religion for 1,000 years
Under Indonesia's Surface, an Intricate Quilt of Faiths
By Norimitsu Onishi
Yogyakarta Journal, New York Times
Thursday, February 18, 2010
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/02/18/world/18indo_CA0/18indo_CA0-articleLarge.jpg
Buddhist monks inspected a ninth-century Hindu temple recently
unearthed at the Islamic University of Indonesia in Yogyakarta.
Yogyakarta, Indonesia - As if on cue, the two Buddhist monks in
saffron robes appeared one late afternoon recently, seemingly out of
nowhere, to complete the picture of Indonesia's religious past and
present.
The visitors stood at the edge of a large fenced-off pit where a
ninth-century Hindu temple had recently been unearthed here on the
campus of the Islamic University of Indonesia. On the other side of
the pit, where a mosque's large dome rose in the backdrop, the
muezzin would soon call the faithful to the sunset prayer.
The discovery of the nearly intact Hindu temple was a reminder of the
long religious trajectory of the country that now has the world's
largest Muslim population. In few places on earth have three major
religions intermixed with such intensity and proximity as in
Indonesia's island of Java. If the sultan of Yogyakarta's palace lies
at the heart of this city, Java's spiritual center, the world's
largest Buddhist monument, Borobudur, and one of its largest Hindu
temples, Prambanan, stand in its outskirts.
About 90 percent of Indonesians are now Muslim, with only pockets of
Buddhists and Hindus left. But Hinduism and Buddhism, Java's dominant
religions for a much longer period, permeate the society and
contribute to Indonesia's traditionally moderate form of Islam.
For more than a decade, proponents of a more orthodox version of
Islam have gained ground in Indonesia. More women are wearing head
scarves and more Indonesians are adopting Arabic-style religious
rituals as fundamentalists press for a purge of pre-Islamic values
and ceremonies. But Indonesia's traditional Islam provides a
counterpoint.
"This is Indonesia," said Suwarsono Muhammad, an official at the
Islamic University. "In the long history of Indonesia, we have proven
that different religions can live peacefully."
In that spirit, Mr. Muhammad said, the university planned to showcase
the Hindu temple prominently in front of a library to be built around
it, in the shape of a half-circle.
It all began last August when the private university decided to build
the library, "the symbol of knowledge of our religion," next to the
mosque, Mr. Muhammad said. In the two decades the university had
occupied its 79-acre campus outside Yogyakarta, no temple had ever
been found. But chances were high that they were around. Most of the
nearby villages had the same prefix in their names: candi, meaning
temple.
By Dec. 11, a construction crew had already removed nearly seven feet
of earth. But the soil proved unstable, and the crew decided to dig
20 inches deeper. A backhoe then struck something unusually hard.
The crack the backhoe left on the temple wall would become the main
sign of damage on what experts say could be the best-preserved
ancient monument found in Java.
Researchers from the government's Archaeological Office in Yogyakarta
headed to the campus the next day, excavated for 35 days and
eventually unearthed two 1,100-year-old small temples. In the main
temple, 20 feet by 20 feet, a perfectly preserved statue of Ganesha,
the elephant-headed deity, sat next to a linga, the symbol of worship
for the god Shiva, and a yoni, the symbol of worship for the goddess
Shakti.
In the adjacent secondary temple, about 20 feet by 13 feet,
researchers exhumed another linga and yoni, as well as two altars and
a statue of Nandi, the sacred bull that carried Shiva.
"The temples are not so big, but they have features that we haven't
found in Indonesia before," Herni Pramastuti, who runs the
Archaeological Office, said, pointing to the rectangle-shaped temple,
the existence of two sets of linga and yoni, and the presence of two
altars.
Researchers surmised that the temples were preserved in pristine
condition because they were buried in a volcanic eruption a century
after they were built. The lava from Mount Merapi, about 7.5 miles to
the north, is believed to have filled a nearby river before flowing
over the temples, minimizing damage.
Indung Panca Putra, a researcher at the Archaeological Office, said
the temples' walls and statues contained refined details not found in
the dozen small Hindu and Buddhist temples discovered in this area.
Officials moved the most valuable artifact, the statue of Ganesha, to
the Archaeological Office. For further protection against thieves,
workers erected a fence on the campus, and guards limited access
inside.
The two Buddhist monks, though, had had no trouble getting inside.
They had traveled from their monastery, about an hour away by car, to
visit.
"These are our ancestors, so we have a sense of belonging," said one
monk, Dhammiko.
Historians believe that Hinduism spread in Java in the fifth century,
followed three centuries later by Buddhism. Kingdoms hewing to both
Hindu and Buddhist beliefs flourished in Java before they were
eclipsed by Islam in the 15th century.
But Islam itself incorporated beliefs and ceremonies from the other
two religions. Just as some unearthed temples in east Java have a
Hindu upper half and a Buddhist lower half, some early mosques had
roofs in the shape of Hindu temples, said Timbul Haryono, a professor
of archaeology at Gadjah Mada University here and an expert on
Hinduism in Southeast Asia. Early mosques faced not in Mecca's
direction, but west or east in the manner of Hindu temples.
"Things didn't change all of a sudden," Mr. Haryono said. "Islam was
adopted through a process of acculturation."
In Indonesia's arts, like the wayang shadow puppetry that dramatizes
Hindu epics, or in people's private lives, traces of the earlier
religions survive, he said. Food, flowers and incense still accompany
many funerals for Muslims, in keeping with Hindu and Buddhist
traditions.
"Hinduism was Indonesia's main religion for 1,000 years," he said,
"so its influence is still strong."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/18/world/asia/18indo.html?hpw=&pagewanted=print
End of forwarded message from S. Kalyanaraman
Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti
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Jens Stuckelberger
> Hinduism was Indonesia's main religion for 1,000 years
Relax, good doctor; it just amounts to an obnoxious brand of
superstition being replaced by another, more obnoxious one.
Panu
Jai Maharaj) wrote:
> Forwarded message from S. Kalyanaraman
>
> Hinduism was Indonesia's main religion for 1,000 years
Allah be praised that the Pagan night of Jahiliyya is over now.