History of Prambanan
There is no formal written record of the construction of Prambanan. It is thought though to have been built around 850 AD by either King Rakai Pikatan of the second Mataram dynasty or Balitung Maha Sambu of the Sanjaya Dynasty. It is therefore slightly later but more or less contemporaneous with Borobudur. In the 10th century the temple was largely abandoned after the Mataram dynasty moved its court base to East Java.
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The Legend of the Slender Virgin
After her father King Boko was defeated in battle, the Javanese princess Loro Jonggrang reluctantly agreed to marry his victor Prince Bandung, but only if he built a temple with 1000 statues before sunrise. With the help of spirits, Bandung had completed 999, when the princess lit a fire to the east of the temple. Fooled into thinking it was dawn, roosters in the neighboring village crowed and the spirits fled ? and a furious Prince Bandung changed her into stone, the last and most beautiful of the statues.
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Most of the main temples collapsed during a major earthquake in the 16th century and the huge complex lie largely forgotten in the jungle. Following the Anglo-Dutch Java War, Java was briefly under British administration from 1811 to 1816. In 1811, a surveyor working for Thomas Stamford Raffles came upon the ruins of Prambanan by pure chance. It is somewhat ironic that the very brief British rule of Java led to the re-discovery of both Borobudur and Prambanan. The British and Raffles were not in power in Java long enough to really do much about Prambanan though and looting became rife with Dutch residents adorning their gardens with priceless statues and local people taking foundation stones and using them as construction material. Proper restoration began only in 1930 and still continues today.
The Most Frequently Asked Travel Questions about Prambanan
