Borobudur is the largest Buddhist monument in the world. Who ordered its rediscovery in 1814 after it had been buried by jungle and volcanic ash for centuries?
Raffles ran Java during the brief 1811–1816 British interregnum. He commissioned a comprehensive antiquarian-ethnographic survey, heard reports of 'buried stone ruins' at Bumisegoro, and sent the Dutch military engineer Hermanus Cornelius to investigate in November 1814. Cornelius cleared the upper terraces with about 200 local labourers. The full excavation took another century (Theodoor van Erp, 1907–1911), and the substantial structural restoration came from the 1973–1983 UNESCO project.
Read the full story →Borobudur is a 9th-century Mahayana Buddhist temple complex in central Java with about 2,672 narrative relief panels and 504 Buddha statues. It was abandoned in the 14th century, progressively buried by jungle and volcanic ash, and rediscovered in 1814 on orders of the British lieutenant-governor Sir Stamford Raffles.
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