The Ciwa Temple of Prambanan

The Temple of prambanan, or it is more well-known as The Temple of Lara Jonggrang, is one of the cultural inheritances from the ancestors of the Indonesian people having worldwide international value. Moreover,The Prambanan temple has been known all over the world since a long time ago. Lots of foreign visitos have come for a close look at it. They would like to see the ancient building provided with precious artistical setting. They admire the reliefs and ornaments engraved on the foot, the body, and the walls of the temple. As part of this well-known Prambanan Temple there are more other ones scattering out not far away from each other. Some of them are still in good condition in the sense that they can be restored to be like the original state. However, some just have their foundations left or even have no clear borders at all due to the age and modernization of the town

Astronomically the Prambanan temple is located at 10º19’23,53” east longitude and 07º45’07,90” south latitude on Jakarta meridian. The site has the height of 154 m above sea level. The ressort of Prambanan used to be a settlement resort, densely populated, especially in the southern, eastern and northern areas, while in the west there used to be vast rice-fields extending along the Opak river. All of these used to belong to the village of Karangasem, the ward of Bakahardjo, the Prambanan district, the Sleman regency of Yogyakarta. Recently all the land around the temple covering not less than 20 hectares. Today on this vast land has been build an open theater, an indoor theater, offices and archaeological museum, a parking area, a cafeteria, a mosque, souvenir-shops, asphalt roads, ditches, and all other means supporting tourism. Prambanan as the capital of a district with a lot of the remnants of ancient buildings used to be a fertile resort and it is likely that it was a centre of the government and culture during the ancient Javanese age, from about the 8th to the 10th century A.D. From the appearance it can be observed that almost the greater part of the temples discovered here have the characteristic of Hinduism, like the Prambanan temple. There are also, however, temples which have the type of Buddhism like the Sewu temples. Besides, in the south of the mountainous area of the Gunung Seribu (The Sewu Plateau) we can find a range of temples most of which are Hindus like the Ijo and Barang temples and the palace of King Baka. Seeing the ancient remains of the temples with various religious features and their discovery on the pretty small area, we can imagine that from the 8th century to the end of the 10th century the people of the ancient Java had already possess great religious tolerance among them. The characteristic of negotiating for an agreement and mutual help which is still existing among the people nowadays marks certainly a tradition that has been handed down by the ancestors. By the time they were discovered most of them temples were badly ruined, the stones were thrown far away from the original places. The damage was once caused by the violent natural disasters like mountain eruption, flood and earthquake. Wars and violent changes of the government done either by the courtiers themselves or by the vassal kings brought calamity to the centre of the kingdom, and the sacred buildings like temples were not spared by the rebels. A violent natural disaster caused by the eruption of Merapi took place at the end of the 10th century, making the centre of the kingdom, the temples, the settlement and the ricefields washed away by the flood of lava and buried by the mountain ash in the depth of 6m under the surface levels of the present soil. As an example was the discovery of the Sambisari temple and Petirtaan Payak (a sort of water works); they were buried in the depth of more than 6m. Besides, it also happened that the centre of the government was transferred from Central Java to East Java by Empu Sendok at the end of the 10th century.