Java by Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore — Read

With five hundred Buddhas in near neighborhood, one might expect a little of the atmosphere of Nirvana, and the looking at so many repetitions of one object might well produce the hypnotic stage akin to it. The cool, shady passagrahan at Boro Boedor affords as much of earthly quiet and absolute calm, as entire a retreat from the outer, modern world, as one could ever expect to find now in any land of the lotus. This government rest-house is maintained by the resident of Kedu, and every accommodation is provided for the pilgrim, at a fixed charge of six florins the day. The keeper of the passagrahan was a slow-spoken, lethargic, meditative old Hollander, with whom it was always afternoon. One half expected him to change from battek pajamas to yellow draperies, climb up on some vacant lotus pedestal, and, posing his fingers, drop away into eternal meditation, like his stony neighbors. Tropic life and isolation had reduced him to that mental stagnation, torpor, or depression so common with single Europeans in far Asia, isolated from all social friction, active, human interests, and natural sympathies, and so far out of touch with the living, moving world of the nineteenth century. Life goes on in placidity, endless quiet, and routine at Boro Boedor. Visitors come rarely; they most often stop only for riz tavel, and drive on; and not a half-dozen American names appear in the visitors' book, the first entry in which is dated 1869.

I remember the first still, long lotus afternoon in the passagrahan's portico, when my companions napped, and not a sound broke the stillness save the slow, occasional rustle of palm-branches and the whistle of birds. In that damp, heated silence, where even the mental effort of recalling the attitude of Buddha elsewhere threw one into a bath of perspiration, there was exertion enough in tracing the courses and projections of the terraced temple with the eye. Even this easy rocking-chair study of the blackened ruins, empty niches, broken statues, and shattered and crumbling terraces, worked a spell. The dread genii by the doorway and the grotesque animals along the path seemed living monsters, the meditating statues even seemed to breathe, until some "chuck-chucking" lizard ran over them and dispelled the half-dream.