Batujaya sites located in two villages, namely Segaran village, Batujaya district, and Telagajaya village, Pakisjaya district in Karawang Regency, West Java province - Indonesia. The site is located in the middle of rice fields and some near the residential area.
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| Signpost to Batujaya Sites. (Picture from: http://sejarah.kompasiana.com/) |
The discovery of the temple complex in Karawang is not surprising, because it lies in the flow area of Citarum river, which is an economic vein of the kingdom of Tarumanegara. Tarumanegara was a Hindu kingdom in West Java that appear around the 4th century and the 5th AD. The temples in the Batujaya site is Buddhist temples, it was contrasted with the Tarumanegara community at the time was Hindus. This shows, at that time the religious community was living in harmony.
These sites were first discovered in 1984, in the form of small hills in the middle of rice fields, the locals call it 'unur-unur'. Now those small hills no longer exists but changed into the temples of reconstruction results, archaeologist's trenches or pits. In terms of quality, the temple on the Batujaya site is found in not intact condition and not as befits the temple in general. The temple buildings were found partially intact only on the legs or base of the building, except on the Blandongan temple site was the ruins of building.
According to experts, the Batujaya site is the oldest monument complex in Indonesia. Estimated the site comes from the 4th century or the 5th AD , even by foreign archeologists this site has been around since the 2nd century AD. That is to say, the temples on Batujaya site are older than Borobudur temple in Central Java built in the 8th century AD.
As said by Hasan Djafar, an archaeologist from the University of Indonesia, referring to the writings of Fa Hsien, that say in Ye-po-ti many Brahmin community found the bikhsu and bikhsuni and religious people are dirty. Djafar also said the possibility of destroying this monument complex is the invasion of the Srivijaya kingdom which was at that time one of the most powerful maritime kingdom in the archipelago.
On the structure of the Jiwa temple, it shaped like a lotus flower (padma). In the middle, there is a circular structure such as former stupa or Buddhist statue structure. At the bottom of the first, there are seven layers of red bricks. At the bottom of the second five layers of bricks. Uniquely, not found the ladder up, so that's all similar to stupa or the Buddhist statue whose sitting on the blooming lotus. All Jiwa temple building made of bricks plates.
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| Jiwa temple at Batujaya sites. (Picture from: http://www.disparbud.jabarprov.go.id/) |
The word of 'jiwa' is very close to the name of a deity in Hinduism, god Syiwa. Change from 'syiwa' become 'jiwa' occurs because Sundanese accent. Perhaps the proximity of 'syiwa' and 'jiwa' could serve as an object of research. But it's odd when data has been obtained showing that Jiwa temple was closer to Buddhism than Hinduism. Whereas in Buddhism, there is no god Syiwa.
Blandongan temple
Blandongan temple lies about 100 meters from the Jiwa temple. The temple has a larger physical shape. Similar to Jiwa temple, Blandongan also made of bricks without relief, but with a broader measure. In addition it was spacious, the Blandongan temple also has 4 ladders on each side.
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| Blandongan temple at Batujaya sites. (Picture from: http://www.panoramio.com/) |
The bottom of the building there is lane that separates the lane's wall with a bare body building. Building pad measuring 12 x 12 m. In this part there are body building pads measuring 10 x 10 m. Excavation at the site found a number of tablets of Buddhist pictorial relief. Some of them are written in the Pallawa letter. Moreover, it found a few of the scratches stones and other evidence, such as Chinese ceramics, pottery, plaster, decorative and stucco sculptures, as well as many brick of building ruins, so that increasingly proving the temple complex is the Buddhist relics.
The excavations have been going on for 22 years has resulted in the discovery of many artifacts: many of the red brick fragments and then could be reconstructed a large enough temples, pottery, beads, clay tablets and in 2010 (around May, 2010) was the discovery of dozens of human skeletons that remains intact from the skull until the soles of the feet.
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| A 170 cm of human skeleton along with stock pot at the foot of the tomb was found intact at a depth of 1 meter, the longitudinal direction of northeast-southwest, azimuth 60 degrees in the Blandongan temple courtyard. (Picture from: http://www.bluefame.com/) |
Hasan Djafar says that the human skeleton comes from the end of the prehistoric period (circa 2nd century or 3rd AD), long before the time of enshrinement in the sites, which refers on the Tarumanegara kingdom civilization era.
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| Batujaya Museum is stored the temple stone samples, statue fragments, metal crust, amulets, pottery and ceramic fragments from the Batujaya sites. (Picture from: http://www.yacob-ivan.com/) |
On the Batujaya site estimated there are over 30 temples which scattered in an area of up to ± 5 km2 (including the Jiwa and Blandongan temples) and most of them currently in shaped of soil mound and have a named, i.e Serut, Gundul, Damar, Batu Linga, Linga, Lempeng etc.. The temples are intentionally left in mound shape to preserve the sites and prevent the theft attempt of cultural objects by the people who are not responsible. *** [EKA | FROM VARIOUS SOURCES | BLOG BATUJAYA | DISBUDPAR JABAR]
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