Prambanan Temple

The Hindu temple complex at Prambanan is based on a square plan that contains a total of three yards, each of which is surrounded by four walls pierced by four large gates. The outermost walled perimieter, which originally measured about 390m per side, was oriented in the northeast, southwest direction. However, except for its southern gate, not much else of this enclosure has survived down to the present.

The two walled perimeters that surround the remaining two yards to the interior are oriented to the four cardinal points. The second yard's walled perimeter, which measures about 225m per side, surrounds a terraced area that consists of four rows containing 40, 48, 56, and 64 temples, respectively, each with a height of 14m and measuring 6m x 6m at the base, or 224 structures in total. The sixteen temples located at the corners of the rows face two directions; the remaining 208 structures open to only one of the four cardinal directions.














The monument's remaining walled perimeter, which measures 110m x 112m, surrounds an even higher terraced courtyard that supports an additional sixteen shrines. The central yard's three largest temples, which face the cardinal direction east, feature large stone statues of the Hindu deities Vishnu (north), Shiva (center) and Brahma (south).

The centrally-located Shiva temple has a height of 47m and measures 34m x 34m at its base. The Brahma and Vishnu shrines to the south and north of the Shiva temple are 33m in height and measure 20m x 20m at the base. The inside facing walls of the balustrades that surround the central structures of these three shrines are covered with bas-reliefs that present episodes from Vishnu's human incarnations as Krishna (the Vishnu temple) and Rama (the Shiva and Brahma temples). For more information on the Ramayana and Krishnayana reliefs at Prambanan, see the "Introduction to the Javanese Temple."

The Shiva shrine is the only building at Prambanan that has entranceways that open to all four cardinal directions. The doorway that faces the cardinal direction east leads into the shrine's central cella, which contains a statue of the Hindu deity Shiva. The remaining three doors lead into three ancillary chambers that contain statues of the Hindu Agastya (south), Ganesha (west) and Durga (north). With regards to the central shrine, however, there is a possibility that these three statues are not the original occupants of the auxiliary chambers.

Immediately to the east are three auxiliary shrines, each with a single staircase and doorway facing the west. The shrine to the immediate east of the Shiva temple, which contains a statue of the sacred bull Nandi, is 25m in height and measures 15m x 15m at the base. The remaining two shrines, which face the Brahma and Vishnu temples, are 22m in height and measure 13m x 13m at the base. The statuary that visitors see today in the interiors of these two structures are not the original occupants.



It is sometimes suggested that these buildings were intended to house the celestial mounts of the deities Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu. However, this is by no means certain. It has been suggested that these buildings may have initially housed sculptures representing the Hindu god Shiva, including his phallic emblem, the shivalinga. The tripartite structure of the shivalinga represent the Hindu trimurti of Brahma (square base), Vishnu (octagonal mid-section) and Shiva (round tip).

Near the central yard's north and south gates are two 'apit' temples, the original purpose of which is not known. Each of these structures has a height of 16m and measures 6m x 6m at the base. A total of eight smaller kelir ("screen") structures are located just to the interior of the courtyard walls that were probably used to mark out the four cardinal points as well as the four intermediate directions of NW, NE, SW, and SE. In addition, the kelir "temple" that marks the center of the entire complex has actually been incorporated into the structure of the main Shiva shrine. All nine temples are 4.1m in height and measure 1.55m x 1.55m at the base.