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PRAMBANAN, THE LARGEST HINDU TEMPLE
Prambanan is the largest Hindu temple compound in Indonesia, located in central Java, approximately 18 km east of Yogyakarta. Not long after its construction, the temple was abandoned and began to deteriorate. A temple will only be rebuilt if at least 75% of the original stones are available. Today, it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the largest Hindu temples in south-east Asia. It is characterised by its tall and pointed architecture, typical of Hindu temple architecture, and by the 47m high central building inside a large complex of individual temples.The temple was damaged during the earthquake in Java in 2006. The temple has been closed to the public until damage can be fully assessed. The compound is assembled of eight main shrines or candis, and more than 250 surrounding individual candis. The three main shrines, called Trisakti meaning "three sacred places", are dedicated to the three gods Shiva the Destroyer, Vishnu the Keeper and Brahma the Creator.
The Shiva shrine at the center contains four chambers, one in every cardinal direction. While the first contains a three meter high statue of Shiva, the other three contain smaller statues of Durga, his wife, Agastya, his teacher, and Ganesha, his son. The statue of Durga is also called temple of Loro Jongrang (slender virgin), after a Javanese princess, daughter of King Boko. After long negotiations she eventually agreed to the marriage, under the condition that her prince built her a temple ornamented with 1000 statues, between the setting and the rising of the sun. Helped by supernatural beings, the prince was about to succeed. The prince, furious about the simple trick, changed Loro Jongrang to stone. The bas-reliefs along the twenty sides of the temple depict the Ramayana legend. The monkey king Hanuman brings his army to help Rama and rescue Sita. The temple complex is surrounded by more than 250 individual temples of different sizes, called Pewara, believed to have been offered to the king as a sign of submission.
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