Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 2.djvu/497

 CHAP. IV. JAVA. round Ceylon in thousands and tens of thousands on their way to their distant sea-girt home. The solution of this difficulty may perhaps be found in the suggestion that the colonists were not Indians after all, in the sense in which we usually understand the term, but nations from the north-west the inhabitants in fact of Gandhara and Kamboja, 1 who, finding no room for new settlements in Indian Proper, turning to their right, passed down the Indus, and sought a distant home on this Pearl of Islands. Whoever they were, they carried with them the bad habit of all their cognate races, of writing nothing, so that we have practically no authentic written record of the settlement and of its subsequent history, and were it not that they made up for this deficiency to a great extent by their innate love of building, we should hardly know of their existence in the island. They did, however, build and carve, with an energy and to an extent nowhere surpassed in their native lands, and have dignified their new home with imperishable records of their art and civilisation records that will be easily read and understood, now that the careful survey of the antiquities has been undertaken by the Dutch Government under the direction of a highly qualified Commission. It has been said, and not without reason, that the English did more for the elucidation of the arts and history of Java during the five years they held the island (1811 to 1816) than the Dutch had done during the previous two centuries they had practically been in possession. The work of the governor, Sir Stamford Raffles, is a model of zealous energy and critical acumen, such as is rarely to be found of its class in the English language, and is the storehouse from which the bulk of our knowledge of the subject till quite lately had to be derived. His efforts in this direction were well seconded by two Scotsmen, who took up the cause with almost equal zeal. One of these, John Crawfurd, noted down everything he came across with patient industry, and accumulated vast stores of information but he could not draw, and knew nothing of architecture or the other arts, with which he had no sympathy. The other, Colin Mackenzie afterwards Surveyor-General of India drew every- thing he found of any architectural importance, and was the most industrious and successful collector of drawings and manuscripts that India has ever known ; but he could not 1 The Kambojas were a non-Aryan people inhabiting the Kabul valley. They are mentioned in the 5th and I3th Aroka Edicts. 'Epigraphia Indica,' vol. ii. pp. 447fif. ; * Bombay Gazetteer,' vol. i. pt. I, pp. 49of.