Two giants squat on either side of a minor road in what is now a small village area on the outskirts of Malang in East Java. They seem to be both aggressive guards and benevolent protectors. They wear crowns made of skulls, have fanged teeth and their hands, legs and feet are massive and elephantine.
A giant dvarapala stone figure sits in a area that was once part of the Singosari kingdom. (JP/Simon Marcus Gower)
These are stone giants known as dvarapala and were intended as guardians, typically of temples, and yet today they seem sad and forlorn figures. They sit discarded along what is today an insignificant road. But they do hint at what once might have been here.
These stone giants would have been part of an impressive kingdom. Today they stand within a village that lies 10 to 15 kilometers to the north of the center of Malang, just off the main road between Malang and Surabaya. It bears the name Singosari and centuries ago it would have been no mere village.
For the better part of one hundred years in the 13th century this was a land of kings of the Singosari dynasty. Also standing within the current village of Singosari is the temple, or candi, which bears the same name, hinting at the kingdoms that were once here.
Singosari Temple in East Java stands tall and majestic. (JP/Simon Marcus Gower)
Candi Singosari stands some 250 meters away from the two giant dvarapalas and is a funerary temple built to honor the fifth and last king of the Singosari dynasty, King Kertanegara. He died at the end of the 13th century and it is said the temple was erected ten years after his death, but it has a strangely unfinished feel.
Steps lead up to a raised terraced two meters above the ground level. From this terrace four doorways and four chambers within the temple structure can be reached. Above each of these doorways are what are known as kala heads. Similar to the dvarapala giants down the road, these heads are fearsome protectors of the chambers.
The kala heads are unusual as they appear unfinished. Usually such heads would have intricately carved details but the features here are unusually smooth, suggesting that the stone carvers never got around to finishing them. Perhaps their unfinished state left them less capable of protecting the contents of the chambers.
Today only one of the chambers has a figure left within it. This is the figure of Agastya, who was a Shivaite teacher said to have walked across water to reach Java. This is a finely carved figure that has evidently suffered over the centuries but is still honored and prayed to; people leave flowers and incense sticks burning at his feet.
All around the small fenced-in precinct of the temple there is a collection of other figures and various other ornamented and carved stones that suggest there were many more stone structures in the area. There are indeed many other temples to be seen in this part of East Java and they too hint at the extent of the once considerable kingdoms in the region.
Not far from Singosari is a small box-like temple which is slowly being surrounded by the growing town of Malang.
This is a temple which is said to be the oldest surviving Hindu temple in East Java but it is unusually named. It is now tucked away in an alleyway in an area that is increasingly becoming a residential complex. Its name, Badut, seems unusual because that word could be taken to mean "joker" or "clown", but there is nothing funny about this temple.
Like Singosari, it is a funerary temple. It is thought to have been built between 750 and 760 and was erected to honor King Gajayana. He belonged to the Kanjuruhan Kingdom, one of the earliest recorded kingdoms in East Java, but Candi Badut is a simple square structure.
Like Singosari it is fenced in, and there are carved and shaped stones placed around the precinct of the temple that indicate there must have been much more here once. But the area evidently fell into disuse and neglect; when it was rediscovered in 1923, the temple was largely a mess of stones and had to be reassembled.
Today the temple is being overshadowed by modern development -- it has a new Bible seminary as a nearby neighbor. Candi Badut is becoming rather lost in urban development but another small and modest candi in these parts offers a far more bucolic setting.
The temple known as Candi Sumberawan is quite beautifully located as it sits in the foothills of Gunung Arjuna (Arjuna Mountain). A narrow footpath leads to the temple and this footpath follows the line of streams that carry clear, cool water down from the mountains -- this water too is carried to supply the town of Malang.
It is a good walk from any passing roads, practically a trek into an area of terraced rice fields and forests. Local people bathe in the mountain water as it streams by but there are few houses here. The temple sits in a small clearing amongst some sparse trees. Again, kingdoms are represented by a temple.
This is today a remote part but Candi Sumberawan is said to have been built to commemorate the visit to the area by King Hayam Wuruk of the great Majapahit kingdom in 1939, another indication that much more was once here.
Today it is a solitary stone reminder of lost kingdoms. It is also different to Singosari and Badut in that it is a Buddhist temple. Its stupa (structure) is incomplete but is sufficiently in place to remind one of the stupas at Borobudur. The structure itself is very plain, there are little or no decorations, just crisply cut and placed stones.
Candi Sumberawan is very modest and rather remote but its modesty and location give it a simplicity and calm in which one can contemplate the lost kingdoms of East Java. They once must have been great, but today they are only fleetingly represented by centuries-old stone monuments.
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