Borobudur

Where it is

Borobudur stands on a low rise in the Kedu plain of central Java, ringed by volcanoes — Merapi and Merbabu to the north-east, Sumbing and Sindoro to the north-west — with the Progo and Elo rivers meeting nearby. The plain's volcanic soil is exceptionally fertile, which is what supported the population and the surplus that a monument of this size required. It is not a building with rooms; it is a single stepped structure of some two million blocks of andesite laid over an earth core.

The land and water around it

• The Kedu plainbasin

  A fertile volcanic basin between four volcanoes. The ash that periodically buries the region is also what makes its soil productive, which is the standing bargain of living in central Java.

• Merapivolcano

  One of the most active volcanoes on Earth, about 25 kilometres north-east. Its ash has fallen on the monument repeatedly, including in 2010, when the stones were covered and had to be cleaned.

• The hill beneathplateau

  The monument is built over a natural hill rather than raised from flat ground, which is why it has no interior. That choice is also its structural weakness: the earth core moves, and the stone above it has to follow.

Its history, in short

It was built in the eighth and ninth centuries under the Shailendra rulers, at a period when central Java also produced the Hindu temple complex at Prambanan a short distance away — two great religious monuments of different faiths, within a few decades and a few kilometres of one another. Within about a century the centre of Javanese power moved east and the monument fell out of use; volcanic ash and vegetation gradually covered it. It was cleared under Raffles in 1814, badly restored, damaged by nineteenth-century souvenir removal, and then dismantled and rebuilt in a UNESCO-backed campaign in the 1970s and 1980s that also gave it a drainage system it had always needed.

Timeline

Dates are shown on a timeline rather than as changing shapes on the map. The globe draws modern boundaries only, and tinting a modern outline to stand for a historical one would state something we cannot source.

Places that carry meaning

• The relief galleries9th century

  Several kilometres of narrative relief along the terrace walls, read by walking clockwise and rising as you go. The design makes the doctrine a route rather than a text.

• Prambanan9th century

  A large Hindu temple complex about 40 kilometres east, built within decades of Borobudur. Two monumental religious programmes of different faiths in one small region and one short period.

• The perforated stupas9th century

  The upper terraces carry bell-shaped stupas of pierced stone, each containing a seated Buddha visible only partially from outside — a deliberate half-concealment at the top of a monument whose lower reliefs are entirely legible.

Learn the language here

1. 1Understand which languages are spoken hereBorobudur is multilingual. Start with which languages are used, by whom, and for what — the phrase list only covers one of them.Written by Globe Quest

Check yourself

• Why does Borobudur have no interior?

  It is built over a natural hill rather than raised from flat ground

  The hill is the core, which is also why the earth beneath it moves and the stone has to follow.

• Why is Indonesia's national language based on Malay rather than Javanese?

  Malay was a trade language, so it did not belong to the largest ethnic group

  A deliberate choice at independence: the shared language is nobody's home advantage.

Worth arguing about

• A Buddhist and a Hindu monument, decades and kilometres apart. What does that say about how religions actually coexist?
• The 1970s restoration took the monument apart to save it. When is that the right call, and when is it a rebuild?

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