Sambisari Temple
One day in July 1966, a peasant was hoeing a vegetable patch in the village of Sambisari, Yogyakarta Special Territory, when his hoe struck something hard. He stopped to examine the stone and found it to be carved and to be imbedded in the soil with others, all of which had once, obviously, been parts of a building. That is how Sambisari Temple was discovered. When the Archeological Service heard about this find, they began to dig the temple out. Their work was made more difficult by the fact that a village road crossed the site and because the base of the temple lay buried 6 meters below the present surface. A band of volcanic ash, covered over with oxidized sand to a total depth of 1 meter, had been further buried in a waterborne flood containing ash, sand, large stones and other eruption debris. It is known that Mt. Merapi, an active volcano that is only about 18 kilometers away from Sambisari, erupted early in the 10th century. We can conclude that Sambisari was buried by this eruption, since the temple is dated to the end of the 9th century. Sambisari is a Hindu temple, and was there fore probably built by one of the rulers of Mataram. Since Mataram vanished from Central Java after this eruption, Sambisari may have been the last temple to be put up by Mataram rulers.
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