Prambanan face-lift: A long, winding road

Bambang Tiong, Contributor, Yogyakarta

The glorious appearance of the three main temples in the Prambanan Temple compound will prompt people to think of the past. Many have no idea that it took more than 100 years to make the temples look as they do today.

A book published by the Ministry of Education and Culture in 1991 points out that Dutchman C.A. Lons first reported the discovery of Prambanan (also known as Roro Jonggrang) Temple in 1733. The temple was in ruins, abandoned amid grass and trees.

An epigraph found at the site revealed that the Sanjaya Dynasty, the biggest Hindu kingdom in Java, built the temples around the middle of the ninth century.

It was discovered later that the compound consisted of three main temples devoted to Vishnu, Shiva and Brahma. They lie from south to north. There were three smaller wahana (transportation) temples for Garuda (a mythical bird mounted by the god Vishnu), Nandi (cow) and Angsa (goose) and hundreds of perwara (accompanying) temples. There were also two apit (flanking) temples, four kelir (color) temples and four corner temples. The site has 240 temples in total.

Shiva is the tallest main temple, standing at 47 meters. The other two are only some 30-meters high. The wahana temples are the same size, measuring 13 by 13 square meters with a height of some 22 meters. The perwara temples - there are some 224 of them - are arranged in such a way that the shorter temples lie on the outside and become taller toward the center.

The first attempts to reveal the temple's presence were made in 1885 by clearing the site of grass and shrubs followed by grouping the stones, under the supervision of J.W. Inzerman, Groneman and Th. van Erp.

The work, focusing on the restructuring of the Shiva temple, was continued 33 years later by the local archeological office under the supervision of P.J. Perquin. Due to the political situation at that time, the project was halted for some years and was only restarted in 1937. World War Two then caused another delay in the restoration work.

In 1951, the work began again and was completed on Dec. 20, 1953, before former president Sukarno publicly opened the Shiva Temple the same year.

Another restoration project, for the Brahma Temple, began in 1977 supported by the government's five-year development budget of some Rp 740 million (US$70,500). It finished in 1987. As for the Vishnu Temple, a nine-year restoration project began in 1982, with a budget of Rp 1.1 billion.

Even the wahana temples underwent restoration, just a month after the completion of the Vishnu Temple project. The complete restoration project finished in 1993.

The Yogyakarta Historical and Archeological Heritage Reserve (SPSP) office chairman, Wahyu Indrasana, said that so far only 18 of the 240 temples at the Prambanan Temple compound had been successfully restored. "It's mainly due to the lack of funds," he said.

The complexity of the work played a major role in the long- term nature of the restoration project, apart from the financial problems.

"The temple stones have different sizes and forms. Besides, we are only allowed to replace 25 percent of them with new stones. Otherwise, we could be accused of faking the history and archeology," Wahyu said.

Bambang Prasetya, Chairman of the Restoration Working Group of Yogyakarta SPSP Office, agreed with Wahyu's opinion, saying that restoring a temple should be conducted by following a number of steps including searching for the original stones, deconstructing, conserving, making replacement stones and reconstructing.

He said that the restoration work would not return the temple to its original state.

"It has involved engineering, the main objective of which is to preserve the durability and wholeness of the temple," Bambang said. He also said that construction of the foundations had reached a depth of between 11 and 15 meters in order to reach the stable land layer.

This had forced the restorers to use steel, which was not found in the original structures. "We use brass construction for the temples, as it is more resistant to corrosion than iron," said Bambang.

The current structures of Prambanan Temple, especially the Brahma and Vishnu temples, will be able to survive for another 1,000 years.

"It will survive if nature is stable, even with earthquakes of five to six on the Richter scale and no human interference is involved," Bambang said.