The publication of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles's The History of Java in 1817 marked a new sophistication in the recording of British experiences of the island.Footnote ¹ Providing a depth of analysis and breadth of subject matter, Raffles's publication was not the fairly simplistic diaristic account of adventure and opinion that had characterised many earlier British publications on Southeast Asia, but a highly detailed, minutely observed and handsomely illustrated study.Footnote ²

The second volume of Raffles's substantial publication opens with a chapter on the island's candis and antiquities illustrated with engraved vignettes by a number of professional printmakers as well as a group of aquatinted plates by William Daniell. Considered not only a leading exponent of the aquatinting process but also one of the country's foremost artists specialising in the Oriental view, Daniell's plates for The History of Java represent some of the period's most beautiful images of Southeast Asia.

This article explores the way in which Java's crumbling candis, so handsomely illustrated by Daniell, were appreciated by British audiences as far more than just the exotic and arcane architectural detritus of a distant land. When Raffles published The History of Java, images of the artistic remains of past civilisations were understood by his readers in very specific ways. Influenced by aesthetic theories that linked artistic accomplishment with socio-political development, British audiences were attuned to viewing artistic output as a gauge of material progress, while ruins, a favourite leitmotif of the period, prompted melancholic and philosophical reflection on the course of empire in which decline was inevitably linked with a society's economic and political condition. Informed by contemporary theories of aesthetic and socio-political development, the descriptions and depictions of Java's Buddhist and Hindu monuments in The History of Java allowed Raffles's readers to speculate on the condition, both past and present, of Javanese society and its relative state of development in comparison with European, South Asian and Southeast Asian cultures.

During the mid-eighteenth century, a number of scholars began suggesting that artistic endeavour might effectively function as a barometer of civilisation, shedding light on the broader socio-political development of a people rather than merely providing an indication of their aesthetic tastes. This approach was developed to its most convincing in the most important treatise on art and aesthetics compiled during the eighteenth century, Johann Joachim Winckelmann's The History of the Art of Antiquity (1764) which had a profound influence on the way in which the artistic remains of early cultures were assessed and understood. What made Winckelmann's thesis so groundbreaking was that he chose not to focus, as others had done, on the iconographical meanings of ancient statuary or on the biographies of artists highlighted as significant in classical texts. Instead, he attempted to elucidate Greek history through a systematised examination of its artistic remains, in the process developing a stylistic chronology for Greek art that traced its progression from its archaic beginnings through to its eventual decline.Footnote ³

By mapping the evolution of a civilisation's aesthetic consciousness, Winckelmann incorporated the concept of historical progress and the correlation between artistic endeavour and socio-political context into critical assessments of specific objects and art styles. Despite the detection of numerous errors, inconsistencies and generalisations in his chronology, his thesis had a considerable impact on the way in which past cultures were assessed and understood.Footnote ⁴ Indeed, so influential did the concept of a link between the socio-political condition of a civilisation and its artistic output become, that by the mid-nineteenth century it was acceptable to suggest that artistic remains could paint a more accurate picture of a civilisation than the more conventional accounts of its military or commercial prowess.Footnote ⁵

Economic factors, though, still played a critical role in shaping perceptions of progress. The coupling of socio-political development with economic growth, both of which, under the right conditions, were held to be illimitable, was an optimistic mode of thought that gained considerable attention in the latter part of the eighteenth century.Footnote ⁶ Perhaps the most influential and widely read statement of this kind was Adam Smith's An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776) in which Raffles became interested when preparing The History of Java. The scale of civilisation, Smith suggested, was best determined using economic development as its index. “According to the natural course of things”, he noted,

Smith's determination that “a civilized and commercial society” represented the highest and most progressive order of social organisation was also adopted by other members of the British enlightenment. John Millar, for example, in his The Origin of the Distinction of Ranks (1771) had described the evolution of society in terms of a progression from hunter-gatherers, to pastoral then agricultural communities, and finally to the commercial state.Footnote ⁸ Joseph Priestly, too, advocated an economic basis for social organisation in which he held that a commercial society enjoyed distinct benefits over those more primitive systems further down the order. The development from a hunter-gatherer society to one organised around commercial enterprise, he suggested in his lecture on The Advantage of Commerce to a State (1788), involved an increased interdependence and social cohesion which in turn resulted in an expansion and improvement in the system of government and the administration of justice. Commerce encouraged peace, industry and enterprise, and stimulated a demand for labour thereby ensuring that the “nation may procure themselves the conveniences they want; and thus human life be rendered much happier”.Footnote ⁹ William Robertson evidently agreed. In his The History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles V (1792) he suggested that commerce exerted “considerable influence in polishing the manners of the European nations, and in establishing among them order, equal laws, and humanity”.Footnote ¹⁰ Commerce, it seemed, had a civilising effect on those societies in which it became established.

There was, however, an anomaly in the progress-follows-commerce paradigm that was obvious to the British merchants who plied the trade routes of Southeast Asia. Clearly Asia, like Europe, had its share of commercial states of long standing, yet an involvement in international trade had not ensured their progress and prosperity. While many Asian polities could be included within the category of commercial societies, it was a category that was held to cover a very broad range of accomplishment: the characteristics of commercial societies may have been detectable in Asia, but the Asian examples were understood to be very imperfect ones.Footnote ¹¹

Java, a reviewer of Raffles' publication noted, was a “happily situated country [which] may be supposed to have arisen to commercial prosperity, very early”.Footnote ¹² This was something Raffles took care to emphasise within his text. “The same advantages which the Europeans derived from the navigation of the Mediterranean”, he observed,

These exchanges, Raffles suggested, had made a profound contribution to the island's “high degree of civilization and . . . advancement in the arts” which its ruined candis so elegantly and eloquently betokened.Footnote ¹⁴ There was little doubt, he hypothesised, that Java “very early emerged from barbarism, and rose to great commercial prosperity”.Footnote ¹⁵ Indeed, he compared its situation, so highly conducive to commercial exchange, with Smith's description of England, quoting a passage from Book III of The Wealth of Nations. Like England, he noted, Java,

Clearly, long before Europeans had ventured into their waters, the Javanese had participated in an extensive trading network.

Such activity, however, had not been sustained. While Javanese involvement in trade may have once set them on the path to “advancement in the arts”, they were considered to have early on deserted maritime commerce and were now “almost entirely unacquainted with navigation and foreign trade, and little inclined to engage in either”.Footnote ¹⁷ Much of the blame for this was laid on the island's system of government which had not allowed a commercial society to develop according to Smith's “natural course of things”. Since the late seventeenth century when François Bernier had published his widely read and translated Histoire de la Dernière Révolution des Etats du Grand Mogol . . .(1671–72),Footnote ¹⁸ oriental despotism had been supposed to be the universal, even a natural condition of government throughout the whole of Asia, Southeast Asia included. Indeed, the Abbé Raynal, in his Histoire Philosophique et Politique des Etablissements et du Commerce des Européens dans les Deux Indes (A Philosophical and Political History of the Settlements and Trade of the Europeans in the East and West Indies) (1772),Footnote ¹⁹ one of the most widely read and influential treatises on European imperial and commercial expansion of the period, asserted quite simply that “[a]ll Asia is subject to a despotic government”.Footnote ²⁰ British authors rarely challenged the validity of this generalisation of almost breathtaking proportions, sweeping together as it does a multitude of cultures and political entities. Instead, the universality of oriental despotism was held to be self-evidentFootnote ²¹ and Raffles had numerous precedents when he assured his readers that the Javanese were “as industrious and laborious as any people could be expected to be, in their circumstances of insecurity and oppression” which were the consequence of a government that was “in principle a pure unmixed despotism”.Footnote ²²

Despotism was considered a powerful disincentive to progress as it stifled all motivation to improvement, both material and intellectual. Where an individual could not enjoy security in their ownership of property, could not safeguard the profits of their labours, could not be guaranteed reward or preferment for outstanding ability or expertise, why, British commentators asked, would they outlay the capital or effort necessary for the improvement of agriculture, manufacture or education that were considered imperatives for progress? According to William Jones, despotism was

Under such conditions, any civilisation would be hard pressed to achieve stasis, let alone progress. Under despotic rule, a population could be stirred to action only by fear or force. Incentive was nonexistent, and society mired in cowering apathy.

Javanese society, though, had to contend not only with the impositions of local elites but also the “influence of a withering monopoly, the rapacity of avarice armed with power, and the short-sighted tyranny” of a Dutch colonial administration, which, by adapting for its own purposes “all the pre-existing machinery of despotism, . . . aggravated the evils of a capricious and semi-barbarous government”.Footnote ²⁴ While the Dutch government in Europe was considered to “breathe the spirit of liberality and benevolence”, the “tyranny and rapacity” of its colonial administration was widely censured and appeared to confirm Hume's observation that those who benefited from political freedom were tyrannical in their rule of others.Footnote ²⁵

The charge of political and economic mismanagement had considerable impact on the way in which contemporary Javanese society was perceived by Raffles's readers and naturally coloured their assessments of the ruined candis and the corollary implications of social progress. Perceptions of Java's despotic mode of government weighed heavily against it and tempered British opinions of artistic fluorescence or cultural excellence within the region. It was European societies from classical Greece and Rome to eighteenth and nineteenth-century Western Europe that were judged by British commentators as the most advanced civilisations, the West always being considered the most appropriate source for the type of society to which humankind was progressing.Footnote ²⁶ Certainly British perceptions of aesthetic or artistic progress in Southeast Asia were imbued with this chauvinism. The privileged place that classical Greek art held in European aesthetic criticism meant that it became the exemplar against which all other artistic endeavours were measured and, despite an increasing interest in Gothic and non-European architectural styles, the cool formalism of Greek art dominated the canons of good taste as the epitome of the aesthetic ideal. It was a comparison to which Javanese art and architecture were not immune, enabling British readers to gauge the island's cultural achievements, about which they knew little, against the more familiar Graeco-Roman models which informed so much of Europe's own cultural landscape.

Even before The History of Java brought Java's architectural remains to the attention of British readers, Indian art and architecture had been subjected to similar comparisons and some of the conclusions drawn were later echoed in British judgements of the Southeast Asian monuments. Hodges's had been a lonely voice when he suggested in his Dissertation on the Prototypes of Architecture (1787) and again in his Travels in India, During the Years 1780, 1781, 1782 & 1783 (1793 and 1794) that India's architectural styles should be judged on their own merits rather than against the classical ideals of Grecian models (which he nevertheless very much admired).Footnote ²⁷ More often, Indian art and architecture were scrutinised in terms of how they equated with the Graeco-Roman standards. Indeed, the collector Charles Townley, even while he looked to India as a source of new examples of ancient statuary, remained focussed on Greece and Rome: he hoped to supplement his celebrated collection of Greek and Roman antiquities (now in the collection of the British Museum) with Indian objects in the expectation that a study of subcontinental statuary would shed more light on the ancient world of the Mediterranean.Footnote ²⁸

For those afforded the opportunity to view the Indian temples, Greece and Rome were never far away. In his Oriental Memoirs, James Forbes recounted a visit to Elephanta in the company of “an eminent English artist”. “[H]e was so absorbed in astonishment and delight as to forget where he was”, wrote Forbes. “He had seen the most striking objects of art in Italy and Greece, but never any thing which filled his mind with such extraordinary sensation”.Footnote ²⁹ Such emotions, however, Forbes felt forced to qualify:

Such prejudices are also apparent in assessments of Javanese sculpture and architecture. In closing his chapter on the island's antiquities, Raffles suggested that a comparative analysis of the Javanese remains and Graeco-Roman models was both appropriate and inevitable, although he did not take on the project himself. The haste with which The History of Java was prepared, he suggested, forced him to compile his chapter on Java's antiquities largely from the accounts of others and precluded him from expanding further on a subject which he did not in any case feel confident of undertaking. “My object, as you know, is rather to collect the raw materials, than to establish a system of my own”, he had written to William Marsden in 1815,Footnote ³¹ absolving himself of the responsibility of adding interpretation to his largely descriptive text. But while suggesting that a comparative study would “require more time and learning than I can command”, he did propose it as an interesting line of enquiry suitable for those better placed to make such judgements.Footnote ³²

Others did not feel so reticent in offering their opinions on the matter. Captain Godfrey Baker, who had provided much of the material on which Raffles's chapter was based, added a disclaimer to his otherwise enthusiastic description of Prambanan which struck a tone similar to Forbes's regarding Elephanta. Although waxing lyrical about the remains which he described as “stupendous, laborious and finished specimens of human labour” and as examples of “the polished, refined taste of ages long since forgot”, he could not help but add a few words of reservation which hint at the superiority of the classical civilisations of the Mediterranean. “I doubt not”, he cautions in moderation of his praise, “there are some remains of antiquity in other parts of the globe more worthy of the eye of the traveller, or the pencil of the artist”.Footnote ³³

The comparisons between Javanese and Graeco-Roman art and architecture were not universally disparaging, but neither were they wholeheartedly approving. Those objects and monuments which to British eyes most closely approached European models were better received than those that did not, but praise in this context was generally still lukewarm. “Their figures, as works of art, possess various degrees of merit”, suggested a reviewer of The History of Java who based his opinion on the publication's plates. “[S]ome are elegant, and remind us of the Greeks; others are uncouth compounds, analogous to the worst taste of the worst time of Egyptian mythology”.Footnote ³⁴ Mackenzie's choice of vocabulary when describing an image of Siva (although he did not recognise it as such) found at Prambanan, reveals a bias not only in favour of western sculptural styles, but also for the superiority of their physiognomy. The Graeco-Roman models, he implied, represented both cultural and biological excellence:

Similarly, his highly positive opinion of the remains of Candi Sari was based in part on the candi's restrained architectural style which he implied accorded more closely with key Hellenic ideals than with what many believed to be the worst excesses of Hindu artistic practices:

“Simplicity, . . . Unity, Proportion & Truth”, the cornerstones of the Grecian architectural ideal so appealing to British sensibilities, were also recognised in Java by John Crawfurd who expressed surprise to find at Prambanan “a degree of symmetry and proportion little to be expected in such structures”.Footnote ³⁷ He was not overly impressed by the remains, however, and his criticisms regarding a “want of pillars” and a “disagreeable impression of heaviness and inelegance” reveal a prejudice in favour of the Grecian model: “[f]or the place they are in, they are indeed wonderful structures, but one must be a Hindu to view them with anything like enthusiasm”.Footnote ³⁸ Indeed, when Crawfurd did admire examples of Javanese architecture, it was generally for “the excellence of the materials, their great solidity and the minute laboriousness of the execution” than for their aesthetic qualities.Footnote ³⁹

At its best, it seemed, Javanese art and architecture could be but a pale reflection of the Grecian ideal. To the British way of thinking, the Graeco-Roman remains, and by implication the cultures of their creators, were far more sophisticated than those to be found in Java. How then did the Javanese candis compare with the artistic and architectural productions of other cultures in the region, and, to follow the logic of British thinking, how did Javanese civilisation as a whole measure up to its neighbours? By casting the net beyond the Graeco-Roman models to include other South and Southeast Asian cultures in their comparisons, British observers were able to speculate on where Java stood on the scale of world civilisations, both when the candis had first been constructed, and in the early nineteenth century, many years after they had ceased to occupy a central place within Javanese culture.

Java's nearest neighbours would not necessarily have found such comparisons particularly flattering. In Raffles's opinion, Java “had once attained a far higher degree of civilization than any other nation in the southern hemisphere”.Footnote ⁴⁰ The British interpreted the supposed absence of imposing remains on many other islands of the archipelago as an indication that neighbouring civilisations of the region had never achieved a level of sophistication comparable to that which had once existed in Java. In 1819, when the British had a very imperfect knowledge of Sumatra's early history and knew nothing at all of the great seventh to thirteenth-century maritime power, Srivijaya, which had had its most important centre of power in Southern Sumatra, Raffles had speculated on the island's relative primitivism:

Marsden, however, had held some Sumatran cultures in higher regard. When outlining his theory on the “comparative state of the Sumatrans in civil society” in his influential publication The History of Sumatra, he had divided the peoples of the world into five categories. Naturally the “refined nations of Europe” were ranked at the top of the scale along with the ancient Graeco-Roman civilisations and “perhaps China”. To the second class he assigned the Persian, Turkish and Mughal empires at the height of their prosperity, along with other European countries, while in the third he included “along with the Sumatrans, and a few other states of the eastern archipelago . . . the nations on the northern coast of Africa, and the more polished Arabs”. The fourth class of his scale included the “less civilized Sumatrans” along with Pacific islanders, some Central and South American empires, the Tartars, and all those societies which acknowledged private property and observed social hierarchies. Those in the fifth and final division were clearly beyond the pale, comprising “the Caribs, the New Hollanders, the Laplanders, and the Hottentots, who exhibit a picture of mankind in its rudest and most humiliating aspect”.Footnote ⁴²

While he estimated Sumatra to be placed approximately half-way along the scale of the civilised peoples of the world, Marsden had only lukewarm hopes for the island's contribution to world history. “[W]e know not” he observed,

Such an observation underscores the importance of the Javanese architectural remains for they provided incontrovertible evidence of the “extensive traces of antiquity, foreign intercourse, and national greatness”Footnote ⁴⁴ that Raffles believed constituted “striking and obvious proofs . . . of the claims of Java to be considered at one point far advanced in civilization”.Footnote ⁴⁵ “[T]he perfection of architecture”, he noted, “is one of the most convincing proofs and striking illustrations of a high state of refinement”.Footnote ⁴⁶ Others echoed Raffles's sentiments. The ruins, suggested Charles Assey, “prove the arts to have formerly attained a high degree of elegance and perfection among [the Javanese]”Footnote ⁴⁷ and “evince a grandeur and advance in the arts of sculpture and design that could only have existed among a polished people”.Footnote ⁴⁸ Henry Ellis evidently agreed. The ruined candis, he claimed, “attest a considerable degree of civilization and advancement of the arts” had once existed in Java.Footnote ⁴⁹ Similarly, a reviewer of The History of Java commented that it was “evident that this island must formerly have been the seat of a great, independent, magnificent government; and of a dense and wealthy population”,Footnote ⁵⁰ going on to observe that

The island's architectural remains, so handsomely and attractively presented in Raffles' publication, proved that not only had there been, at least at one time, a civilisation on Java that had been very wealthy, highly organised, politically united, technically proficient and artistically skilled in order to initiate and realise building programmes that had obviously been both extensive and expensive, but it had enjoyed some longevity, existing under one elite or another for some centuries. “The magnificent works constructed by the Hindoo powers”, wrote another reviewer of Raffles's publication,

The ruined candis, then, according to the majority of commentators discussing the island's fortunes at this time, proved that Java had at one time contributed to “the revolutions of human grandeur” even if it was thought that other peoples of the region had not.Footnote ⁵³

Crawfurd, though, was not as convinced.

He acknowledged a rather grudging admiration for the extent and quality of the remains of the Majapahit empire then extant, but he cautioned readers to ignore “those exaggerations which the imagination is prone to indulge with regard to all that is involved in the mystery of antiquity”. Majapahit's celebrity, he felt, could be attributed to the grandiloquent claims of the Islamic invaders who brought about the empire's downfall and “disseminated and exaggerated the fame of a conquest they had themselves made”.Footnote ⁵⁵ But Crawfurd did perceive the Javanese to have “distinguished themselves above the other tribes . . . by their progress in civilization” and like Raffles, considered them to be the “most civilized” of all the peoples of the archipelago.Footnote ⁵⁶

Comparisons between the Javanese remains and those of the subcontinent were more complex. Those Javanese objects or buildings that diverged from styles perceived as overly Hindu attracted particular praise from British commentators, as may be ascertained from Mackenzie's comments regarding Candi Sari's lack of “stinking lamps”, “monstrous figures”and “obscene symbols”, and Raffles's general observation of the island's ruined candis that “[t]he beauty and purity of these structures are entirely divested of that redundancy of awkward and uncouth ornaments and symbols which are found in India”.Footnote ⁵⁷ But while the more gentle iconographic representations found in Javanese sculpture which displayed “no gross or indecent representations” or the “very fantastic or absurd”Footnote ⁵⁸ were more suited to British tastes than Indian models,Footnote ⁵⁹ the relationship between Javanese and Indian objects and monuments as it was understood by the British was more convoluted than these observations would at first suggest.

Rather than viewing the Javanese monuments as the purely localised artistic expression of communities indigenous to the island, most British commentators suggested that their construction had been prompted by external factors traceable to the subcontinent. Indeed, many felt that the Javanese had not only been incapable of conceiving, developing and realising the construction of the monuments, but also of actively seeking out Indian models or expertise and importing them to the island at their own initiative. Few assumed that it was the Javanese who had initiated the introduction of Indian iconographies and practices to the island which they then adapted to suit their own needs. Rather, British commentators generally accepted that at some stage a large-scale migration from part or parts of the subcontinent had established colonies on Java, bringing with them their own cultural, political and religious agendas, a proposition enthusiastically endorsed by scholars of the subcontinent eager to promote India's claims to great imperial power. Such a stance encouraged a belief that Javanese art and architecture were largely derivative with the Indian models being imposed on, rather than imported by, the local populace, prompting the construction of the candis and fundamentally altering the island's cultural and artistic milieu.Footnote ⁶⁰

Certainly, the British found that their experiences in India afforded them some familiarity with the iconographies of the Javanese antiquities. Errors of interpretation as to whether sites were Hindu or Buddhist notwithstanding, most of the Europeans who visited the ruins recognised that there were clear correlations and stylistic affinities between the Javanese monuments and Indian models. There are numerous instances of British authors ascribing Indian characteristics to Javanese monuments, such as Raffles's suggestion that

and Ellis's similar observation of the remains at Bantam which he observed

Others identified stylistic correlations between the Javanese remains and specific regions or monuments on the subcontinent, such as the coincidence of pyramidal forms in the candi at Sukuh and those in India: “. . . many buildings in the Carnatic and Dekkan, evince that the same indefatigable race of workmen constructed the latter, and those at Suku”.Footnote ⁶³ Similarly, Crawfurd found certain affinities between Javanese statuary and the physical and cultural characteristics of the inhabitants of Western India.

As well as finding analogous religious practices and architectural or sculptural styles, the British also attributed the Javanese remains to an Indian authorship based on the nature of the sites chosen for their construction. Parallels were drawn between the physical landscapes depicted in The History of Java ruin plates and “the wild, mountainous, mythological, poetical, semibarbarous, region of the Dekkan”.Footnote ⁶⁵ But while the British were correct to suppose that the physical landscape had been of crucial importance in the siting of the candis, they adopted a somewhat disparaging tone to explain the connection. Whereas they felt confident that the pleasures they themselves derived from wild, mountainous scenery were grounded in rational aesthetic theories of appreciation for the picturesque and the sublime, the predilections of South and Southeast Asian peoples, they suspected, were based on mere myth and superstition. As one reviewer of The History of Java observed, the spiritual associations of the physical landscape were of singular importance in the siting of the Southeast Asian monuments.

This was a theme also explored by Crawfurd although he assessed the coincidences in the siting of monuments on Java and the subcontinent in more measured tones. The positioning of the candis, he suggested, offered additional proof that an Indian community had been responsible for the Javanese remains:

Furthermore, it was argued, the siting of the monuments was attributable to Indian genius on the very practical grounds of the ease of access to suitable building materials. This, apparently, was a consideration that Mackenzie did not conceive the local Javanese population to be capable of determining for themselves.

Little credit for the construction of the monuments was directed towards the Javanese free of subcontinental influence, except perhaps for those sites which were considered less sophisticated or aesthetically pleasing. This was certainly the stance adopted by Crawfurd who did not believe the local population capable of possessing the architectural and artistic skills necessary to produce some of the more ornate and well-built candis.

Crawfurd passed a similarly disparaging judgement of these monuments in his article on Prambanan published in Asiatick Researches (1820).

In Crawfurd's opinion, Java's artistic decline had come about because of the reassertion of a purely local and, to him, inferior aesthetic. Not everyone, however, subscribed to this rather simplistic model of dual cultural influence in which artistic styles were ascribed to either an indigenous or an external origin. While agreeing that a colonising migration from the subcontinent had initiated the construction of the candis, others, Raffles included, viewed such influences in terms of a process of acculturation. Indigenous practices, they implied, were not suppressed intact to re-emerge unchanged after Indian influence had waned, but had instead been radically and irreversibly transformed creating a culture that, as Coedès would come to describe it, was more Indianised than Indian. Under such a model, the ruined candis had to be considered not as the products of a temporary interlude of foreign colonial domination, but more properly as the cultural inheritance of the current Javanese population.

In the end, however, differences of opinion regarding the degree to which the candis were the result of local effort or constructed thanks to imported expertise were largely irrelevant to British estimations of the region's present inhabitants. Expressing a typically bittersweet ruin sentiment, Mackenzie had surveyed the remains at Prambanan with “mixed emotions of regret & pleasure”.

Even Raffles, the island's most enthusiastic British advocate, conceded that contemporary Javanese society bore little resemblance to the magnificence evinced by the monuments. “The grandeur of their ancestors sounds like a fable in the mouth of the degenerate Javan”, he lamented, “and it is only when it can be traced in monuments, which cannot be falsified, that we are led to give credit to their traditions concerning it”.Footnote ⁷²

Certainly no contemporary buildings were considered to match the splendour of the ruined candis. Crawfurd judged Java's mosques to be “mean and paltry wooden fabrics, utterly unworthy of any notice”,Footnote ⁷³ and although Raffles described the island's kratons as the “only modern buildings they possess, of any architectural importance”,Footnote ⁷⁴ he devoted only slightly more than one page within The History of Java to a fairly perfunctory description of their general layout. By Raffles's reckoning, nothing had surpassed the construction of the candis, not only in terms of their architectural and artistic excellence but also as events of national significance, the candis “forming, if I may so express myself, the most interesting part of the annals of the people”.Footnote ⁷⁵

It was not only the seeming inability of the contemporary Javanese to replicate the feats of artistry, technical ability or social organisation achieved by their forebears that led the British to conclude that the island's civilisation was now in atrophy, but also their apparent reluctance or inability to appreciate or even understand the candis. “The indifference of the natives”, observed Raffles, “. . . led them to neglect the works of their ancestors which they could not imitate”.Footnote ⁷⁶ Java's candis were judged to be deserted, desolate and forest-drowned, their splendid and carefully-wrought masonry either mouldering away or appropriated for more prosaic uses. Even the special aura that Raffles suggested still surrounded Prambanan could not protect it from the careless plunder of the local population:

Large blocks found their way into the construction of dykes. A linga was used as a stone bench, a yoni as a rice mortar.Footnote ⁷⁸

Similarly, on the Dieng Plateau, Baker found that many of the local villagers had reused stonework from the nearby candis, though rarely with the same skill and precision as the original masons.

Worse still was his observation that

Their experiences in Southern Europe, the Middle East and Asia had taught the British to have confidence in the exclusivity of their own taste and discernment to truly appreciate the ruined remains of past civilisations. For this reason, the British felt justified in “rescuing” objects and bringing them back to Britain. There they would be safe from the depredations to which they were subject in their original locations, thanks to the perceived avarice and ignorance of the local population. In Java, the removal of objects by westerners was preservation, but by locals, destruction. While Mackenzie, Baker and Crawfurd all lamented that the Javanese candis had had their contents plundered by ‘treasure-hungry’ locals,Footnote ⁸¹ few appear to have questioned either the removal of objects by Europeans, or the exploitation of the avarice they found so objectionable in the local population, by purchasing those objects they were keen to secure for themselves. Such acts of ‘liberation’ were commonplace in those parts of the world in which the remains of the past were to be found, and British societies such as the Dilettanti often sent envoys to bring back samples from sites of particular interest. Nor was it a practice peculiar to the British antiquaries. “Take everything you can”, wrote Choiseul-Gouffier, French ambassador to Constantinople to his countryman Fauvel, “lose no opportunity to loot everything which is lootable in Athens and its surroundings . . . Spare neither the dead nor the living”.Footnote ⁸²

Not all local populations were keen to part with their ruined remains, however. By careful examination of the British accounts it is possible to find evidence that many Javanese were loath to part with objects which held particular significance. Their attempts to defy European appropriations, however, attracted little official attention or comment, although brief mention is made of acts of resistance by inhabitants in the vicinity of Candi Singasari, a candi which included some superb examples of late-thirteenth century statuary. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, a number of images had been removed at the request of Nicolaus Engelhard, the Dutch Governor of Semarang, and installed in ‘De Vrijheid’, the government park at Semarang.Footnote ⁸³ According to a report by a Colonel Adams, members of the local population transferred numerous other objects a quarter of a mile deeper into the jungle to prevent any further removals either by Europeans or by those local elites who were prepared to supply European collectors:

This directly contradicts Engelhard's own assertion that “[t]he Javanese who inhabit the parts where these Antiquities were found had little value or respect for them”.Footnote ⁸⁵ Indeed, his admission that “they make offerings to several of these Idols or Images, without being able to give any reason why”Footnote ⁸⁶ implies otherwise.

Such an observation brings in to question Raffles's claim to the British “discovery” of remains such as those at Candi Sukuh which, he suggested,

Similarly, Crawfurd recounted in his paper for the Asiatick Researches how he had

It is hard to accept Crawfurd's and Raffles's use of the term “discovery” which credits the remains with an interest or importance that dates only from their sighting by Europeans and so completely ignores local knowledge and practices.Footnote ⁸⁹ A melancholic air of abandonment about the candis may indeed have been apparent to the British for whom the Southeast Asian monuments were astounding, exotic, and mysterious. It does not follow, however, that such emotions would or should have been stirred in the Javanese for whom the monuments were familiar features of a landscape with which they had had a daily and life long affinity. To the local inhabitants the candis were simply there, an unchanging and commonplace presence.Footnote ⁹⁰

Familiarity, however, did not equate with complacency. The Javanese, while supposedly neglectful of the ruined candis, still treated them with deep respect. It was not only Engelhard who commented on the continued observance of ritual at the candis. “Ganésa and Durgá, but more particularly the latter, are still objects of veneration with the inhabitants of Java”, Crawfurd noted in his paper for the Asiatick Researches.

Nor did he find that such acts of veneration were limited to just those of the ‘lower orders’ of the population. Members of the ruling elites also made offerings when “meditating ambitious schemes of no common danger”.Footnote ⁹² Similarly, while visiting Candi Ceto, Lieutenant Williams had found that “[o]n the 12th & last [terrace] stands a small modern native pangoong, in which incense seems to have been lately burnt”,Footnote ⁹³ something which Raffles also noted at Candi Sukuh:

The conversion of the mass of the population to Islam may have meant that the candis were no longer the central focus of their spiritual lives, but given the reports which mention the action taken by local populations to protect the monuments from the attentions of Engelhard, Mackenzie and others, and the frequency with which the British sources comment on the continued practice of acts of veneration being made at the sites, assertions that the Javanese were completely indifferent to the candis clearly do not hold true. The deterioration of the monuments so condemned by the British (although still appreciated by them as attractively picturesque, as Daniell's handsome plates attest) in no way impinged upon the Javanese in their exercise of ritual observances at the candis, nor was the spiritual significance of the monuments compromised by the population's conversion to Islam.Footnote ⁹⁵ Their veneration for the candis, however, was incomprehensible to the British. Because Javanese observances did not conform to British codes of aesthetic criticism that demonstrated a discerning understanding of the artistry and architectural merits of the monuments and the concomitant connotations of cultural and socio-political sophistication, the ways in which the Javanese paid their respects to the candis were not recognised or paid much credence.

Instead, British commentators categorised the attitudes of Java's current inhabitants in terms of a shameful neglect and cultural deterioration. Following the pattern laid out by Winckelmann in which an age of artistic excellence was followed by an aesthetic decline, artistic and architectural enterprise in Java were perceived to have sadly degenerated, the contemporary Javanese wholly incapable not only of recreating the artistic accomplishments of an earlier period, but even of appreciating, understanding or explaining them. Given the early nineteenth-century interest in the relationship between a people's artistic output and their political and socio-economic condition, the state of Java's ruined candis had broader implications than merely representing an aesthetic deterioration. For an astute reader of the period, the ruin landscape plates in The History of Java chronicled not only the passing of a high point in the island's artistic and creative history but also hinted at the momentous implications of a wider social and cultural deterioration that accompanied the passing of a once thriving and sophisticated empire.

Illus. 1 William Daniell after H. C. Cornelius, One of the smaller temples at Brambánan in its present state (plate from Thomas Stamford Raffles's The History of Java, London: 1817, vol. 2, opp. p. 16), aquatint and etching.