Monumental Java

"Monumental Java" by J. F. Scheltema is a book about monuments of Java's past. The author enriches the world with an exhaustive treatise on ancient Javanese architecture and sculpture. Excerpt: «Java's ancient monuments are eloquent evidence of that innate consciousness of something beyond earthly existence which moves men to propitiate the principle of life by sacrifice in temples as gloriously divine as mortal hand can raise. Fear, however, especially where Buddhism moulded their thought by contemplation intent upon absorption of self, entered little into the religion of the children of this pearl of islands.»