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Stone stele at Prambanan shows fish removing stones from Rama's bridge to Lanka
About this photograph
- Creator
- Margery H. Freeman
- Date created
- Unknown
- Location
- near Yogyakarta, Indonesia
- License
- This photograph copyright ©2006. Terms of use
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A stone stele from the Ramayana wall carvings at Prambanan Temple shows fish and other sea creatures removing stones from Rama’s bridge to Lanka.
Large fish and serpents, all carved with large overlapping heads facing to the left, are depicted carrying the bridge stones away in their mouths. Even crabs and lizards seem to be helping as the demon king Ravana instructed his mermaid daughter to oversee the destruction of Rama’s bridge.
Prambanan is the largest remaining Hindu temple complex on the island of Java in Indonesia. It was built and dedicated to the god Siva during the ninth and tenth centuries CE. There were once hundreds of small temple structures in this vicinity, but most were so damaged before conservation began in 1918 that they cannot be rebuilt.
Among the approximately fifty remaining smaller temple sites at Prambanan are three large temples dedicated to the gods Siva, Vishnu, and Brahma. Scenes from the Ramayana are carved into the these stone temples’ walls. For reasons still not fully understood, the Prambanan temples were abandoned soon after their completion. Leading theories to explain the temples’ abandonment are possible earthquakes and the gradual ascendance of Muslim over Hindu kingdoms after the fourteenth century.
Classical Javanese dance performances of the Ramayana usually are held seasonally at Prambanan temple during the evenings. A 2006 earthquake in Central Java, however, caused considerable damage and the temple’s temporary closure for repair. Prambanan in a UNESCO World Heritage site.
This image was photographed in July 1986.
