The earliest historical polity which appeared in the Sundanese realm in the Western part of Java was the kingdom of Tarumanagara, which flourished between the 4th and 7th century. Hindu influences reached the Sundanese people as early as the 4th century CE, as is evident in Tarumanagara inscriptions. The adoption of this dharmic faith in Sundanese way of life was, however, never as intense as their Javanese counterparts. It seems that despite the central court beginning to adopt Hindu-Buddhist culture and institution, the majority of common Sundanese still retained their native natural and ancestral worship. By the 4th century, the older megalithic culture was probably still alive and well next to the penetrating Hindu influences. Court cultures flourished in ancient times, for example, during the era of Sunda Kingdom. However, the Sundanese appear not to have had the resources nor desire to construct large religious monuments similar to those built by Javanese in Central and East Java. The traditional rural Sundanese method of rice farming, by "ladang" or "huma" (dry rice farming), in contrast to Javanese irrigated "sawah" wet rice cultivation (that require complex administration, coordination, and a large number of labour forces), also contributed to small populations of sparsely inhabited Sundanese villages.