STRIKING THE PAST

Digging up the red brick past                                               Duncan Graham / Batu

One Friday last November Anton Adi Wibowo reckoned it was about time he tackled a task he’d long avoided.

His family’s 1,000 square meter block in Pendem village near the East Java hilltown resort of Batu was just going to waste.  It was producing weeds, not income.

On one side neighbors were growing rice.  On the other a small cemetery, the resting place for 60 souls. 

Wibowo, 40, owns a metal workshop.  He’s also the Ketua Rukun Tetangga (elected community head).  He didn’t want a high-maintenance crop so chose avocados. The loam was known to be deep but just 40 centimeters down his sharp spade shuddered and stopped.

He’d hit a big red brick. Alongside was another.  More digging exposed an orderly line.

Wibowo didn’t know what he’d found but realized it was important and should be reported.  He’d heard of another historical site that had been smashed by religious fanatics and didn’t want that to happen again.

 “There’d been occasional discoveries of brick pieces by gravediggers but this was quite different,” he said.

“The bricks were intact and clearly part of a construction.  I stopped planting avocados.  I was happy, excited and surprised.”

A few days after Wibowo struck brick a ten-person team from the Trowulan East Java Cultural Preservation Center arrived and rapidly realized they were onto something special.

Their trowel and brush work has so far exposed 56 square meters of paving with what at first appeared to be a square dry well in the center surrounded by low walls.  It was full of heavy boulders dumped higgledy-piggly.

A well?  At 2.1 meters square it seems too large.  Archaeologist and Malang University history lecturer Dwi Cahyono (right) says it’s the foundation pit for a three-stage temple tower which may have risen to 12 meters and was probably built a thousand years ago.

There are more questions than answers and few clues.  The best are the clay blocks which measure 25 X 35 X 9 centimeters.  They’re much larger and heavier than the handy sharp-sided bricks used during the Majapahit Era (1293 to 1527) reinforcing the view that it was built earlier. 

Cahyono said eight years ago he predicted a temple once served the area: “In my 2012 History of Batu I wrote about a Shiva Hindu temple not far from Pendem.

“I based my theory on early 20^th century Dutch writings, and from the discovery of a fragment of an Agastya (Hindu sage) statue near the village.  Just 400 meters to the west is the original site of the Prasasti Sanggurah stone tablet which has inscriptions about King Wijayaloka who ruled what’s now Malang.

“It has information about land grants and the Mataram Kingdom.” Also known as the Medang Empire, the realm shifted from Central to East Java sometime during the 11^th century.  The reasons are unknown.

Wibowo and Cahyono weren’t the only ones moved by the discovery. So were the leaders and administrators of Batu.  The town used to be part of Malang 20 kilometers to the southeast and 400 meters below, but became a separate city in 2001. 

It has a cool climate, vegetables and fruit, adventure playgrounds and hotels but lacks the bigger city’s serious stuff - the remnants of ancient temples.  These include the 8^th Century Candi Badut (clown temple), the oldest in East Java.

If proved that earlier civilisations also occupied Batu then local pride could be polished afresh and new marketing devised to lure culture tourists.

“We want to preserve our heritage and make it accessible,” said Batu tourist officer Parama Sari.  “This may be a Hindu temple but that’s unimportant.  It’s our national history.”

Offerings of rice and lime leaves have been left at the site along with joss sticks and a tiny charcoal burner.  Wibowo said these had been placed by “the community” though all families in Pendem are said to be Muslim.

Two Dutch coins dated 1825 and bits of a broken bottle have been found among the rubble.  Maybe in the mid 19^th century looters were burrowing for booty, artifacts wanted by European collectors.

Alongside is an example of state vandalism.  Many years ago a damaged stone pedestal Yoni (womb in Sanskrit) representing the Hindu goddess Shakti was found together with a small statue of a cow. Clumsy attempts to repair with cement and steel rods have failed and the artifacts have been daubed by bureaucrats with white ID numbers.

The locals have already decided the bricks are the remnants of a temple and dubbed it Candi Mananjung, a word found inscribed on the Prasasti Sanggurah and the original name for Pendem village.

A light metal roof has been built over the diggings to protect from the weather and a fence erected to deter thieves.  The only access is through a hole smashed through a small building storing a trolley used for moving corpses to the little cemetery alongside.

“I first became interested in history at school when I read about a temple in a magazine,” said Cahyono.

“This candi is an extremely important find which tells us a little more about our country’s rich history. We’ll keep digging.  The more we find the more we’ll know and understand.”

(Breakaway)

Come home, ancient stone

The 3.6 tonne Prasasti Sanggurah is dated 928.  It’s two meters tall and was discovered in 1812 by the lieutenant-governor of Java Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles.  He gifted it to his boss Lord Minto, then British Governor-General of India.  It’s now possessed by his family in Scotland.

To Western historians it’s known as the Minto Stone, and Indonesia wants it back. Twelve years ago there were reports that businessman and Gerindra Party politician Hashim Djojohadikusumo (brother of Defence Minister Prabowo Subianto) was dealing with the Minto family for the stone’s repatriation.

The 7th Earl of Minto, Timothy George Lariston Elliot-Murray-Kynynmound was reported in the Scottish media as saying: "We have received an approach from a representative of the Indonesian government and we are prepared to continue discussions."

Neither Djojohadikusumo nor the Earl responded to requests for an update so presumably the stone from the tropics still rests uncomfortably in the snow-swept highlands of Britain. Cahyono and other Indonesian historians want it back.

First published in The Jakarta Post 13 March 2020:  https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2020/03/13/digging-red-brick-past.html

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