Sukuh
Interesting facts
- The date on the main gate is a carved rebus: an ogre devouring a man stands for the numbers of the Saka year 1359, equivalent to 1437.
- A second gateway carries another picture-date, an elephant-priest biting a tail, which reads as the Saka year 1378, or 1456.
- Relief panels tell the Sudamala story, in which Sadewa, youngest of the Pandawa brothers, is tied to a tree and threatened by the wrathful goddess Durga.
- The truncated pyramid is often read as Mount Mandara, used to churn the cosmic ocean for the elixir of immortality, a myth echoed by nearby Garuda statues.
- The flat-backed stone tortoises all face west and recall Kurma, the tortoise avatar of Vishnu who carried the world on his shell.
- The dancing Ganesha in the smithy relief is highly unusual, shown naked, with a demonic face and holding a small animal, probably a dog.
- In 1930 the Dutch archaeologist W. F. Stutterheim suggested Sukuh's rough style came from village woodcarvers working hastily as the Majapahit kingdom crumbled.
- The site was first reported in 1815 by Johnson, the British Resident of Surakarta, gathering material for Raffles' History of Java; restoration began in 1928.
- Traces of burnt incense on the summit platform show that the temple is still used for prayer and offerings.
Why it is worth it
On the western slopes of Mount Lawu in Central Java, at about 910 metres above sea level, Candi Sukuh looks unlike any other Javanese temple. Instead of the tiered, finely carved towers of the classical age, its main structure is a plain truncated pyramid of rough stone, about 8.7 metres high, with a single steep stairway up its face to a flat top. The terraced complex leading up to it is filled with frank imagery of birth, fertility and sexuality, which has made it one of the most enigmatic monuments of ancient Indonesia.
Sukuh dates from the fifteenth century, the final phase of the Hindu-Buddhist Majapahit kingdom. A chronogram on the western gate gives a date equivalent to 1437, which is generally read as its consecration, and an inscription on a large lingga gives a date corresponding to 1440. It was one of the last major temples built in Java before Islam spread across the island in the sixteenth century, and it breaks with the principles of earlier Hindu temple architecture.
The carvings are the heart of the site. At the gateway, a carving pairs a lingga and yoni, the male and female symbols. One relief shows a smithy, with metalworkers at their forge alongside a dancing figure of Ganesha. There are three stone tortoises with flattened backs that probably served as altars, and a life-size male figure grasping his phallus. The tall lingga, nearly two metres high and decorated with a kris, a sun and a crescent moon, was removed and is now in the National Museum of Indonesia in Jakarta. When Thomas Stamford Raffles visited in 1815, during the British administration of Java, he recorded the site in a ruined state, with figures beheaded and the lingga broken.
The temple lies in the village of Berjo in Karanganyar Regency. Another late terraced sanctuary, Candi Cetho, stands higher up the same mountain.
Getting there
Sukuh is on the western slopes of Mount Lawu in Karanganyar Regency, east of the city of Surakarta (Solo); the town of Sragen is about 25 km away in a straight line. The nearest airport is Adisoemarmo International (SOC) at Solo, about 43 km away.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Sukuh is a 15th-century Javanese-Hindu temple (candi) that is located in Berjo, Ngargoyoso district, Karanganyar Regency, Central Java, Indonesia on the western slope of Mount Lawu . This temple has a height of 8.7 metres (29 ft). Sukuh temple has a distinctive thematic relief from other candi where life before birth and sexual education are its main themes. Its main monument is a simple pyramid structure with reliefs and statues in front of it, including three tortoises with flattened shells and a male figure grasping his penis. A giant 1.82 m (6 ft) high of Shishna with four testes, representing penile incisions, was one of the statues that has been relocated to the National Museum of Indonesia.
Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0
-7.62740, 111.13118per Wikidata