422 FURTHER INDIA. BOOK VIII. resumed their sway, and art vanished from the land, never, probably, again to reappear. BORO-BUDUR. There may be older monuments in the island of Java than Boro-Budur, but, if so, they have not yet been brought to light. The rude stone monuments of the western or Sunda end of the island may, of course, be older, though I doubt it ; but they are not architectural, and of real native art we know nothing. When Sir S. Raffles and J. Crawfurd wrote their works, no means existed of verifying dates by comparison of styles, and it is, therefore, little to be wondered at if the first gives A.D. I36O, 1 and the second A.D. I344 2 as the date of this building. The former, however, was not deceived by this date, inasmuch as at page 67 he says, " The edifices at Singasari near Malang were probably executed in the 8th or pth century. They nearly resemble those of Prambanan and Boro-Budur. It is probable the whole were constructed about the same period, or within the same century; at any rate, between the 7th and pth century of the Christian Era." This, perhaps, errs a little the other way. Heer Brumund, on historical grounds, places Boro-Budur " in the 9th, perhaps even in the 8th century of the Christian Era." 3 On architectural grounds I would almost unhesitatingly place it a century earlier. The style and character of its sculptures are so nearly identical with those of the latest caves at Ajanta (No. 26, for instance), and in the western Ghats, that they look as if they were executed by the same artists, and it is difficult to conceive any great interval of time elapsing between the execution of the two. If I am correct in placing the caves in the first half of the 7th century, we can hardly be far wrong in assigning the commencement, at least, of the Javan monument to the second half of that century. This being so, I am very much inclined to believe that Boro- Budur may be the identical seven-storeyed vihara, mentioned by Aditya-dharma in his inscription at Menankabu. 4 Its being found in Sumatra does not appear to me to militate against this view. Ajoka's inscriptions are found in Gandhara, Saurashtra, Mysore, and Orissa, but not in Bihar. At home he was known : but it may be that he desired to place a permanent record of his greatness in the remote portions of his dominions. The date 1 ' History of Java,' vol. ii. p. 85. 2 ' Dictionary of Indian Archipelago,' p. 66. 3 'Boro-Boudour/par Dr. C. Leemans. Leyden, 1874, p. 506 (French translation, P- S3 6 )- 4 Ante, p. 419. Also ' Verhandelingen,' etc., vol. xxvi. pp. 31 el scqq. One of his inscriptions the fourth was found in Java proper.
