The monument called Borobudur, built between the 8th and 9th centuries, sits in the middle of the Kedu Plain in Central Java, Indonesia, flanked by the limestone cliffs of the Menoreh Hills and three volcanoes. It seems to have been designed as an enhancement of a natural elevation in the plain—a manmade mountain of stone blocks rising out of a flat expanse.
As a lone structure, it doesn’t command quite as much awe as the temple complex of Angkor, whose numbers, scale, and variety stun by brute force, or the temples on Bali, which continue to serve as shrines and places of worship. It’s an anachronism, a Buddhist edifice in a what is today predominantly Muslim country.
Borobudur is an architectural marvel, to be sure—massive (the largest of its kind in the world), freestanding, constructed without mortar in the shape of a giant mandala that only becomes apparent from the air. At ground level, from the outside, it’s an overwhelming barrage of repeating motifs—Buddhas (432 of them) sitting in niches adorned with intricate scrollwork and surrounded by a myriad progression of symbols.
It isn’t designed like a temple, which features enclosures that a devotee enters and which houses icons or relics. Borobudur is entirely roofless, save for the niches housing the Buddhas and the decorative arches over the four central staircases that lead from the ground to the summit. Once can ascend the structure this way, clambering straight up for 23 steep meters to reach the 72 "invisible Buddhas" in their open space made of three concentric round terraces set in a square courtyard. But to do so would be to miss Borobudur’s dazzling secret, visible only to those who enter the four levels of corridors on either side of the staircases.
These corridors function as galleries for a spectacular series of bas reliefs depicting stories from Buddhist mythology. The reliefs on the lower levels are particularly well-preserved and show a staggering amount of intricate detail, having been buried by volcanic ash and debris for centuries. Scholars have determined that one begins with the lowest level on the east side of the structure and proceeds clockwise around the monument, reading the reliefs.
On the lowest level there are four strips of reliefs, two on each wall, one atop the other, requiring four circuits. The second, third and fourth levels have one strip on each wall, requiring only two circuits, for a total of ten turns around the monument. On the first level, the walls and balustrades rise high above visitors, creating a narrow canyon that bends at right angles periodically, limiting one’s view of the path ahead. On the upper galleries, the balustrades are lower, revealing the green of the Kedu Plain and the mountain ranges in the distance. The uppermost round levels are completely open, affording views in all directions, and spaces for rest and reflection.
The effect of the galleries isn’t claustrophobic—the sky is constantly overhead, and each corner opens up a new, if identical, vista. The architecture seems to encourage concentration on the sculptural panels. The sitting Buddhas atop the inner walls mark one’s progress like beads on a rosary. The narrow space one walks through teems with figures—humans, animals, plants, monsters—crowding every available space. The human figures smile serenely, even in the most contorted postures, and even the monsters seem benign. There are few scenes of war or strife, and cold stone manages to evoke warmth and welcome. A similar strategy operates in Maya Lin’s design of the Vietnam War Veteran’s Memorial, where the experience of descending past an ever-rising flood of names is the point of the monument.
Not all of the reliefs have been identified, though their sequence appears to have been significant. They were meant to be read in a certain order, although they do not convey story information as much as serve as visual aids or memory prompts. The original visitors to the site would have been familiar with the episode dramatized in each panel and its significance, or would have been guided by a mentor who could narrate the stories as a giant stone picture book.
Momentum appears to have been important, as well—the architecture doesn’t encourage stopping to contemplate a panel, there isn’t that much space to step back for a better view, and the ledges on the walls are too narrow for sitting. In the absence of causal links between many panels (indeed, cause and effect are often depicted in the same panel), separated as they are by decorative flourishes, the narrow corridor compels one to keep moving, and thereby keep the story moving.
The inner wall of the first level of galleries mainly tells the story of the life of Gautama Buddha from his conception to the preaching of his first sermon. The inner and outer walls of the upper galleries—the majority of the reliefs—tell the story of the wealthy young man Sudhana and his quest for enlightenment, perhaps mirroring the objective of pilgrims who came to read the reliefs.
The balustrades enclosing first two levels are more varied in style and tone—they depict various Buddhist folk tales and are punctuated with scenes of daily Javanese life. Here, peripheral details provide glimpses into the past: animal and plant species, tools and machines, customs and rituals, the minutiae of the quotidian. Although these reliefs are meant to be read separately, they seem to offset the main narrative threads on the inner walls, layering the sacred stories with color and context, perhaps framing them in the larger narrative of ancient Java.
Embedded in the monument is, in effect, is a compendium of stories (or a novel), like the Bible, or the Panchatantra, or the Thousand and One Arabian Nights, though not preserved in written language. The stories of Borobudur, told in ambiguous pictorial fashion, do not tell, but evoke or materialize stories carried in the memories of those who visited the monument, who recognized the symbols and configurations and could interpret them correctly. These are stories that are not meant to be read, but remembered and lived.
Borobudur and its purpose remain mysteries to us. Like prehistoric cave paintings, its reliefs were meant to be seen, read, in specific ways, for specific reasons. As a writer of fiction, I seem predisposed to see everything as narrative, and there are convincing arguments for the narrativity of anything that’s been filtered through a human consciousness. Borobudur itself isn’t a narrative, but a metanarrative, an index of a great story that already exists in each pilgrim, which it simultaneously reflects, extracts, and dramatizes with its plan—a progressive circumference into open space and higher ground, ultimately of the world and above it.
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