Archeologists differ on ancient buildings in Karawang

By K. Basrie

JAKARTA (JP): While many archeologists remain in the dark about the history of the remains of ancient buildings at the Batujaya district in Karawang, West Java, Hasan Djafar from the University of Indonesia has developed his own views.

Hasan believes the buildings were a complex of temples, mostly of Buddhist styles, built during the last ruling period of King Purnawarman of Tarumanegara, who -- according to a stone inscription found in the 1870s at Tugu village in North Jakarta -- ruled in the fifth century.

"The temples, constructed with bricks -- instead of stones -- made of clay and paddy husks, were built separately adjacent to the curves of a stream where water flowed from the unpolluted and beautiful Citarum River to the Java Sea," Hasan, who has led several teams of archeologists to the sites, told The Jakarta Post last week.

Today the Citarum River is narrow and the stream, once called the Asin River, has gone away. The temples and other ritual facilities are buried beneath the muddy soil now used for farming and housing, Hasan said.

"Based on the characteristics and the limited traces available, I would like to say the buildings in Batujaya were once a vast ritual complex similar to the site of ruined temples discovered near the Batang Hari River in Jambi, Sumatra," said Hasan, a senior lecturer at the School of Archeology at the University of Indonesia.

According to a study made by the National Center for Archeology Research (Puslitkernas), the ancient remains of temples at Batujaya consist of around 30 unur (earth piles) located separately in areas of about five square kilometers at the Segaran and Telaga Jaya villages in the western part of Karawang.

Hasan said the Batujaya remains were discovered in 1984, thanks to a tip from the locals given to a group of archeology students from the University of Indonesia studying excavations at one of three ancient Hindu temples in Cibuaya, in eastern Karawang.

Hasan said the structures at the two spots almost certainly had important historical significance: "Perhaps they were part of a vast religious complex."

No support

Hasan's depiction receives no support from other archeologists.

Professor Hasan Muarif Ambary, head of Puslitkernas, said any theory on the history of the structures was no more than speculative.

"We have yet to make any historical presumption, because the remains have not been examined chemically to tell us their correct age," said Muarif.

"We'll perform carbon dating works in our next research and excavations, which should be conducted on the upcoming dry season," he added.

Hari Untoro Dradjat, Director of Protection and Development of Cultural Heritage at the Ministry of Education and Culture, said Hasan's theory had been made too early.

"Based on the traces available, so far, I'd only like to say some of the buildings were previously used as worship places but I have no evidence to explain further," said Hari.

Defending his theory, Hasan referred to the Tugu inscription: "The inscription reads that in the 22nd year of his ruling, King Purnnawarmman ordered his people to make a water drain flowing in the middle of the residential area of his grandfather, who was a priest," Hasan said.

According to the inscription, the excavated drain was completed in 21 days with 6,122 tombak (a linear measure of around 3.6 meters), equivalent to 22 kilometers long.

Hasan presumed the drain was the stream -- which could still be seen in a geological map -- flowing from the Citarum River to the Java Sea.

Furthermore, he said, an ancient newsletter once described a Chinese merchant named Fa-Hien who cast ashore in the western part of Java in the fifth century A.D., the ruling period of Tarumanegara kingdom.

"The newsletter said Fa-Hien did not see many Buddhists in the area even though there was a vast religious center," Hasan said.

Stupa alike

Although there were few indications that some of the temples belonged to Hindus, such as a pit where Peripih (the Hindus' ritual deposit box) was buried, Hasan said most of the sanctuaries were Buddhist temples.

"On the top of each of the buildings, bricks were piled up in a circle, indicating there was a stupa (a dome enclosing an effigy of Buddha) on it," he said.

Since the 1984 excavations, archeologists only found 28 broken pieces of ceramics at Batujaya, a broken piece of relief illustrating three sitting Buddha Amitabha and a brick sealed with the soles of children's feet.

At Cibuaya, two Vishnu statues of stone were found in the 1950s. They are now kept at Jakarta's National Museum.

Both temples at Batujaya and Cibuaya were made of bricks from local clay and paddy husks. The size of the bricks was almost two times bigger than the current bricks but their weight was lighter.

All but two of the temples located beneath the huge green paddy fields have been buried again by the archeologists.

The "open" temples have apparently attracted at least 2,000 visitors on weekdays and 10,000 on weekends.

Some of the visitors said they came to the area after being informed about the tales of the structures while others said it was just a matter of curiosity.

"I have no idea about what these temples were all about but looking from their construction materials I'd like to say that these structures were something like the RSS (a local acronym for low-cost houses) nowadays," a visitor from Jakarta said. "The Borobudur temple in Central Java, made of stones, was an exclusive building."

The site remains cloaked in mystery, and promises to do so for many years to come.