The Temple of Love

AUTHOR’S NOTEBorobudur is the largest Buddhist monument in the world. It was built about the ninth century, three hundred years before Angkor Wat and two hundred years before Notre-Dame. Mount Merapi erupted violently about this time, covering Borobudur with volcanic ash and concealing her for the greatest part of a millennium. It was not until 1814, when the English Governor General of Java, Thomas Stamford Raffles, heard rumours of ‘a mountain of Buddhist sculptures in stone’ that an engineer was despatched to investigate. When the Dutch returned after four years of English rule, the Temple was forgotten, but typical of the attitude of the Dutch officials in 1896 was that eight cartloads of Borobudur’s priceless sculptures were presented to King Chulalongkorn of Siam as a present. When I visited Indonesia in 1986, I was tremendously impressed by the restoration of Borobudur, which is fantastic, but I was particularly intrigued by the Temple of Plaosan, which was not discovered and restored until 1948. I found in all the Buddhist Temples a spiritual vibration that was different from anything I have felt in other parts of the world, but it was particularly vivid in Plaosan, which, as I tell in this novel, was built by a Shailendra Princess, who was a Buddhist and her husband. King Rakai Pikatan, the Hindu ruler of Mataram. Exactly as I have described happening to my hero and heroine, I walked round the beautifully restored gallery and saw a relief of a King who had a strikingly Western face. It was from there that my story began.