

Prambanan Temple


Prambanan Temple Complex that located 17 km east of Yogyakarta, on the road to Solo, the largest Hindu temple of ancient Java, and the construction of this royal temple was probably started by Rakai Pikatan as the Hindu Sanjaya Dynasty’s answer to the Buddhist Sailendra Dynasty’s Borobudur and Sewu temples nearby. Historians suggest that the construction of Prambanan probably was meant to mark the return of the Hindu Sanjaya Dynasty to power in Central Java after almost a century of Buddhist Sailendra Dynasty domination. Nevertheless, the construction of this massive Hindu temple signifies that the Medang court had shifted the focus of its patronage from Mahayana Buddhism to Shivaist Hinduism.

Prambanan’s status as one of the most extraordinary pieces of South East Asian religious architecture was recognized by a UNESCO in 1991 when it named this complex a World Heritage Site.