Archeologists differ on ancient buildings in Karawang

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.