Borobudur

The building is not a temple with an inside but a hill sheathed in stone. A visitor walks around it clockwise, rising from one level to the next, and the sequence of reliefs passed is the sequence of reading: the hidden foot carries the Karmawibhangga on cause and consequence in conduct; the four galleries above carry the life of the Buddha and the Jataka and Gandavyuha cycles; the three circular terraces above them are nearly bare, with 72 perforated stupas each holding one image; and the crowning stupa is empty altogether.

Whether that emptiness was intended or is the result of theft cannot be settled from the present state, and the sources differ. What can be stated is that the arrangement runs from the most densely figured to the least, and that the ascent itself is the intended form.

When and why Borobudur was abandoned is not known. The shift of the centres of power from central to eastern Java in the tenth century, volcanic eruption and religious change have all been proposed, and none is supported by decisive evidence. By the early nineteenth century the monument lay under earth and vegetation, and the surrounding population knew it as a stony hill.

The clearance ordered by Raffles in 1814 was carried out by H. C. Cornelius. The first restoration, by Theodoor van Erp, ran from 1907 to 1911 and repaired the upper works. The second, from 1975 to 1982, was undertaken with UNESCO: more than a million stones were dismantled, cleaned and reset over a waterproof layer and drainage. Across those two centuries a large number of Buddha heads left the site and are now in collections on several continents; their return has never been the subject of a comprehensive formal claim.

Borobudur receives two kinds of presence on different terms. It is a place of worship for Indonesian Buddhists, who hold Vesak there each year with a procession from Candi Mendut, and it is a visitor site whose numbers have at times exceeded what the stone can bear. The cap on climbers to the upper terraces and the requirement to wear particular footwear, in force since 2022, answer measured wear on the steps.

The tension between the two presences is neither hidden nor resolved: restrictions that protect the stone also restrict access for worshippers, and differential pricing for foreign and domestic visitors draws repeated objection. This entry records the situation without proposing its settlement.