The Varieties of Indonesian Religious Experience

Posted by John

Indonesia is the world’s largest Islamic-majority country—more than 90 percent of its more than 235 million people are Muslim. Do the math, and you’ll see there are more Muslims in Indonesia than in the entire Middle East. But while there’s an abundance of mosques in Indonesia, Indonesia’s religious experience is far more complicated than this “largest Islamic-majority country” characterization suggests.

The world’s two largest religions—Christianity and Islam—have often eradicated traces of the religions that preceded them around the world. Christianity borrows heavily from Judaism, Islam borrows a bit from Christianity and Judaism, but a more common outcome has been for Islam or Christianity to supplant societies’ existing religious traditions.

This hasn’t been the case in Indonesia, particularly on the main island of Java. The vast majority of people today pray to Allah (even Christians, it turns out, pray to Allah, since “Allah” is actually the Indonesian word for “God.”) But reverence remains for the Buddhist and Hindu traditions that prevailed here for centuries and never disappeared. For one thing, Hinduism still thrives on the Indonesian island of Bali. But more importantly, Indonesians of all faiths—especially in Java—talk approvingly of their society’s “religious syncretism.” This mixing of religions is evident cultural epics that center on Hindu characters and in mosques topped with pagoda-like pendopos rather than traditional Islamic domes.

Located in the seas between the civilizations of China and India, Indonesia adopted elements of both these civilizations’ religious practices starting as early as the 3^rd century A.D. A world away from the religious lodestars of Jerusalem and Mecca, trade networks transmitted Buddhism and Hinduism to Indonesia and much of Asia. Kingdoms emerging on the major Indonesian islands of Sumatra and Java in the 7^th century often adopted one of these faiths as a means of consolidating their society’s collective identity and articulating a belief about the transcendent.  

Evidence of Indonesia’s Buddhist and Hindu traditions are abundant here in Central Java. Nowhere are they more obvious than at the massive Buddhist Borobudur temple and Hindu Prambanan temples outside of the town of Yogyakarta. These UNESCO World Heritage Sites were built within 50 years and 40 miles of each other in the 8^th and 9^th centuries. It seems to confirm Indonesians’ pride in their religious syncretism that here, in the middle of the world’s largest Muslim country, lie two of the world’s major Buddhist and Hindu temples.

We managed to take in both of these sites last Sunday. Borobudur, a symmetrical terraced pyramid topped by a dozens of circular stupa, was constructed from some 2 million volcanic rocks. It would have required incredible religious devotion (or coercion, or perhaps a bit of both) to create. From top to bottom, it stands over 100 feet with a width of 387 feet. This sheer size puts it in the same category as the Mayan Chitzenitah pyramid in Mexico.

Yet for all Borobudur’s grandeur, what’s more impressive are the delicately wrought details on thousands of panels along the six terraces leading up to the top. These bas relief carvings (see a sample to the right) depict scenes from Buddha’s life, with Buddha appearing sometimes as a rabbit, deer or swan. A number of larger Buddha statues—some who’ve lost heads to either looters or decay, no one’s sure which—sit in the Lotus position at different spots along the terraces.

The practice of Buddhist worship at Borobudur (which we followed) is to ascend by walking clockwise around all six terraces to the top, where dozens of Buddhas sit serenely inside thimble-like, latticed stupas. It was less serene than it might have been on account of the huge crowds, but still impressive.

This ascent is meant to parallel the Buddhist journey of enlightenment, from the human world of desire and worldly concerns toward nirvana and the sphere of the gods. It’s hard to imagine places more beautiful than Borobudur, and walking through it you have a sense of the dedication Buddhism has inspired throughout the centuries.

While Borobudur is impressive for its unity and symmetry, the Prambanan temples are more remarkable for their diversity and sheer numbers. These architectural differences are somewhat reflective of the religious traditions themselves—Buddhism with its emphasis on oneness, Hinduism with its panoply of deities of differing ranks and orders. More than 240 of the original Prambanan temples remain, including the six largest temples devoted to primary Hindu deities such as Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma. 

Like Borobudur, the Prambanan temples have bas relief panels carved to depict traditional religious stories. The monumental scale of this undertaking testifies to the following Hinduism once had in this part of Indonesia. We were hoping to get a close look at the panels of Shiva Temple, which contains the Ramayana, a Hindu epic that has become central to Javanese culture and is re-enacted through countless dance dramas and wayang kulit (shadow puppet) performances. Unfortunately, the Shiva and several other temples sustained major damage in a 2006 earthquake. The temples are all still standing, but people are no longer allowed to walk inside them. We had to settle for a view from the distance, which was still remarkable in the late-afternoon sun (see the photo on the left).  

Details about the 8^th- and 9^th-century Javanese kingdoms that created the Prambanan and Borobudur temples are murky. But one story has it that as the Buddhist kingdom that built Borobudur was on the decline, one of its princesses ended up marrying into the Hindu kingdom that built the Prambanan temples a few decades later. Our Lonely Planet Indonesia guide speculates that this union between Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms might explain why there are Buddhist architectural elements in some of the Hindu Prambanan temples. If so, score another one for Indonesia’s religious syncretism.

Lest you think there’s no Islamic worship going on here in the world’s largest Muslim country, rest assured. We had a chance to witness afternoon prayer at a traditional Islamic boarding school earlier this week—we’ll talk more about that and have some other reflections on the varieties of Indonesian religious experience in our next post.