Bali, their spirit goes on leavening the new doctrine and we meet with their symbolism at every turn. Not to mention Central Java, where especially in Surakarta and Jogjakarta their tenacious sway strikes the most casual observer, the great staircase of the Muhammadan sanctum at Giri is adorned with a huge naga, the worshipful rain-cloud descending in the likeness of a serpent, despite the Qorānic injunction to abstain from the representation of animate creation. The pillars of reception-halls and audience-chambers in the houses of the high and mighty, East and West, bear a remarkable resemblance to the linga, witness, e.g., the kedaton[7] built by the Sooltan Sepooh Martawijaya of Cheribon, a Moslim prince who ought to have evinced the strongest repugnance to Siva’s prime attribute.

Under the circumstances we need not wonder that the Islām did so little to stimulate art in Java. Christianity did still less, rather clogged it in its application to native industries, which suffered from the country being flooded with stuff as cheap as possible in every respect, but sold at the highest possible prices to benefit manufacturers in Europe. This is not the place to expatiate on this subject nor to discuss present efforts (in which alas! personal ambitions play first fiddle and jeopardise results) to revive what lies at the point of death after centuries of culpable discouragement, the professional secrets and peculiar devices of native arts and crafts, requiring hereditary skill and the delicate touch of experienced fingers to attain former perfection, being now already half forgotten or altogether lost. Concerning the ancient monuments of Java, it is to the British Interregnum, to Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles that we owe the first measures for their preservation and the first systematic survey of specimens of Hindu workmanship as beautiful as any in the world, more in particular of the Prambanan temples, and also of the Boro Budoor, by common consent the masterpiece of Buddhist architecture. Marshalling his assistants in the archaeological field, especially Cornelius and Wardenaar (whose fruitful explorations and excavations deserved fuller acknowledgment than they received from him), a diligent student besides of the history and literature of the island, doing for Java in that respect what Marsden had done for Sumatra, he inspired Dr. Leyden, Colonel Mackenzie and his rival John Crawfurd among his contemporaries, and of younger generations now equally gone, Wilsen, Leemans, Brumund, Friederich, Junghuhn, Cohen Stuart, Holle,—j’en passe et des meilleurs! The value of their labours must be recognised and it is the fault of the Dutch Government’s apathetic attitude that with such forces at its disposal, so little has been achieved. Each of them, with few exceptions, worked independently of the other and blazed his own personal path in the wilderness of Dutch East Indian antiquities. There was, as Fergusson complained, no system, no leading spirit to give unity to the whole. Disconnected, sometimes misdirected investigation did not result in more than an accumulation of fragmentary material for possible future use, rudis indigestaque moles. And meanwhile the glorious remains of a lost civilisation went more and more to ruin. They were drawn upon for purposes of public and private building; statues and ornament disappeared, not only in consequence of the unchecked, persistent nibbling of the tooth of time, and it seemed almost so much gained if Doorga or Ganesa reappeared occasionally in the function of domestic goddess or god to some Resident or Assistant Resident who demonstrated his devotion to ancient art and care for the preservation of its masterpieces by a periodical process of whitewashing or tarring. Worse than that: dilettantism began to tamper with the finest temples and the miserable bungling of mischievous, quasi-scientific enthusiasts reached its climax in the sorry spectacle prepared for the visitors of the last international exhibition in Paris (1900). There was to be seen in the Dutch East Indian section, a mean, ridiculous imitation of one of the Buddhist jewels of Central Java, a caricature of the chandi[8] Sari, the exterior in nondescript confectioner’s style, daubed dirty white, the interior made hideous by a purple awning, abomination heaped on abomination. And that piteous botch, in fact an unconscious avowal of Dutch colonial shortcomings, did service as a sample of la magnificence d’une religion prodigue en ornaments, en feuillages et en voluptés!

After an era of dabbling by pseudo-Winckelmanns and Schliemanns, spicing their pretences with mutual admiration, the Government decided finally to appoint a permanent Archaeological Commission. Things, indeed, had come to such a pass that there was danger in delay: the island is becoming more and more accessible to globe-trotters of all nationalities, not a few of whom publish their impressions, and if erring authority wields a vigorous Press Law to silence criticism at home, against foreign criticism it has no weapon of the kind, however touchy it may be. So it began to move and the Archaeological Commission (short for Commission for Archaeological Research in Java and Madura), though without a single trained archaeologist among its members, displayed at once a good deal of activity under its first President, Dr. J. L. A. Brandes, exploring in East Java, restoring the chandi Toompang, attending to the Mendoot and Boro Budoor in Central Java, in order that, acting upon King Pururava’s injunction, at last understood and accepted, after a fashion, by Batavia and the Hague, no monument shall be lost which has been wrought in the right spirit. It can be imagined that subordinate officials, eager to follow their superiors’ lead, now revel daily in numberless finds, reported not only from districts, near and remote, in the star island, but from the exterior possessions, from Soombawa, from Jambi in Sumatra, from Kutei in East, from Sanggau and Sakadan in West Borneo, etc. etc. Like the encouraging of native art applied to weaving, wood-carving, the manufacture of pottery, of household utensils of copper and bronze, and so on, the ferreting out of sculptural and architectural ties with the past is quite the latest craze, a stepping-stone to preferment or at least a means of ingratiation with those who set the pace. There would be no harm in this if obsequious ambition did not burgeon here and there into an excess of zeal which makes one tremble, pregnant as it proves to be with dangers well defined by Ruskin: Of all destructive manias that of restoration is the frightfullest and foolishest.

Curiosity being excited, there is the impulse to satisfy vulgar demands, to cater to coarse appetites when admitting every one who knocks at the door of the treasure-house however unworthy. Trippers from the trading centres on the coast swarm round as their fancies guide; tourists from distant climes scour the land, either single spies or driven in noisy battalions of “conducted parties”. Travel in Java is already assuming the character of holiday excursions pressed upon the public in bombastic handbills and posters of transportation companies. Revenue being the principal objective of Dutch colonial solicitude, the opportunity they create is gladly seized to levy gate-money from visitors to the chandi Mendoot.