BOROBUDUR TEMPLE
The Borobudur Temple is considered as one of the seven wonders of the
world. This temple is located at Borobudur District, South of Magelang, Central Java.
Borobudur was built by Sanmaratungga in the 8th century, and belongs to
Buddha Mahayana.Borobudur was revealed by Sir Thomas Stanford
Raffles in 1814. The temple was found in ruined condition and was buried.
The overall height was
42 meters, but was only 34.5 meters after restoration, and had the dimension of
123 x 123 meters (15,129 square meters). There were 10 floors. The first floor
up to the sixth floor was square form, the
seventh to the tenth floor were round for
Borobudur is facing to the East with a total of
1460 panels (2 meters wide each). Total size of the temple walls was 2500
square meters, full of relief. The total number of panels with relief was 1212.
According to investigations, the total number of Buddha statue was 504
including the intact and damaged statues. The temple undergone restoration from
1905 to 1910, and the last restoration was done in
1973 to 1983.
Structural Design of Borobudur Temple
The relief of Borobudur temple started from the base of the
temple up to the fourth platform. The relieves at
the base contained the story of Karmawibhangga. Under the main panel and above theKarmawibhangga relief,
a wide-sized relief was inscripted at
the wall. From this point along the alley, the relief did not show story in the
sequence, but as a repeating part of the story with the same motives which
expressed the world of spiritual beings such as half demonic body (Gandharwa, giants or Yataka, dragon, Sidha or
angels and their ladies friends, Apsara and Nagi, all of
them are heavenly beings who are tender and beautiful.
Division of panels are: the first
panel expressed a heavenly being in sitting position, on both side of this
panel are small panel with a small standing statue. This figures are repeated 26 times for each side of
the wall. Between the panels is carved three bodies, a male flanked by two
women.
Relieves at the Walls of the Alley
There was a long series of main
relieves at the first alley, either at the main wall or at the inner side of Kutamara wall. Relieves at the Kutamara wall depicted Jataka's and Awadana's, a story of Buddha's life which expressed as Bodhisatwa, due to his good deeds in the past. Sometimes, Buddha is expressed in the
form of animals such as rabbit, monkeys etc. As it was told in animated
stories, the story was adopted from Sanskrit book, Jatakamala.
Only one third of the relieves were
known, the rest was still unclear.
The lower relieves of the main
wall contained the same story. The upper relieves also had the same story as
the lower one. The story contained the life of Buddha consisting of 120 frames
until he began teaching Buddha religion. The first frame began from the
South of stairway of the curved gate at the East, and follow the path of the sun (the temple on the
right side). The life story of Buddha was adopted from Lalitawistara book.
At the second alley, Jataka and Awadana story
were continued on the inner side of Utamara, and on the main wall, story was began with stories adopted from Gandhawyuha.
This story was so long that it occupied the main wall and inner side wall of Utamara at the third and fourth alley. The
story showed the adventure of a Sudhana who
met Bodhisatwa Maytreya (the future Buddha) to have religious
lesson from the Buddha. Later on, the Sudhana met
with Bodhisatwa Mandjusri,
and finally he met with Dyani Bodhisatwa Samanta Badra, who gave the highest wisdom. Most of those stories
expressed the use of spiritual strength and unusual happenings.
There were many beautiful
ornaments inscripted at the wall of the fourth alley,
because the fifth alley did not contained any
ornaments. The fifth alley is a transitional alley to the next platform, the
round platform. The next round platforms also did not contained any ornaments
at all (Kaylan,1959).
Inggrid Diani Prihastari
15614342
1SA04
Inggrid Diani Prihastari
15614342
1SA04
