Page:Scidmore--Java the garden of the east.djvu/217

Rh this last fresh importation did not arrest the decay of the faith, and the people, relapsing peaceably into Brahmanism, deserted their old temples. With the Mohammedan conquest of 1475–79 the people in turn forsook the worship of Siva, Durga, and Ganesha, and abandoned their shrines at Brambanam and elsewhere, as they had withdrawn from Boro Boeder and Chandi Sewou.

When the British engineers came to Boro Boeder, in 1814, the inhabitants of the nearest village had no knowledge or traditions of this noblest monument Buddhism ever reared. Ever since their fathers had moved there from another district it had been only a tree-covered hill in the midst of forests. Two hundred coolies worked forty-five days in clearing away vegetation and excavating the buried terraces. Measurements and drawings were made, and twelve plates from them accompany Sir Stamford Raffles's work. After the Dutch recovered possession of Java, their artists and archæologists gave careful study to this monument of earlier civilization and arts. Further excavations showed that the great platform or broad terrace around the temple mass was of later construction than the body of the pyramid, that a flooring nine feet deep had been put entirely around the lower walls, presumably to brace them, and thus covering many inscriptions the meanings of which have not yet been given, not to English readers at least. Dutch scientists devoted many seasons to the study of these ruins, and Herr Brumund's scholarly text, completed and edited by Dr. Leemans of Leyden, accompanies and explains the great folio volumes of four