Manasara Series (I. A Dictionary of Hindu Architecture; II. Indian Architecture according to Manasara-Shilpashastra; III. Manasara on Architecture and Sculpture: Sanskrit Text; IV. Architecture of Manasara: Translation; V. Architecture of Manasara: Illustrations; VI. Hindu Architecture in India and Abroad; VII. An Encyclopaedia of Hindu Architecture) v6.c41.s22.t1.1

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The famous monument is locally known as the Tjandi Boro Budur. The phrase has been variously spelt and interpreted. The most acceptable interpretation would be the ‘Shrine of the Many Buddhas.’ It is undoubtedly a Buddhist monument and appears to have been built to shelter some portion of Buddha’s ashes, which were taken by king Asoka from their original resting places and distributed in 84,000 parts throughout the Buddhist world, ‘to be reburied under such sacred mounds and venerated by rapidly increasing bodies of converts in countries far remote.’ From a critical examination of its carvings and sculptures it has been established that ‘it was erected under the auspices of members of the northern sect or Mahayanists, the more progressive sect, which, in its growth, took over *en masse* [Figure: PLAN CHANDI JAGO TEMPLE most of the popular Hindu gods and their followers and eventually spread through Nepal and Tibet to China and Japan.’ The shrine of Boro Budur appears to have been erected between the seventh and ninth century A.D., although Rhys Davids holds that it must have been erected in the thirteenth century. An inscription of A.D. 656 discovered in Sumatra mentions that a seven-storey temple was erected to the five Dhyāni Buddhas by the Mahārājadhirāja Aditya-dharma of Prathanna (or Great Java). It is, nevertheless, not quite settled if this temple refers to the shrine of Boro Budur, which, however, was built by a prince of the sect that worshipped the Dhyāni Buddhas and that it is usually spoken of as having seven storeys. This fact has been further corroborated by the inscriptions in old Javanese on the base walls of the shrine itself, which are dated to the ninth century by Professor Kern. Groneman, also, believes the shrine to have been in existence in the ninth century.¹