Sari Temple
Ninth century, Sari, on the road between Yogyakarta and Prambanan, is surprising temple. It is built on 17.3 x 10 meter oblong, not square, and it has two stories and even the appearance of a third. The two main temple of Plaosan also have two stories, but there are no other two storied temple known today, except for the carved relief of a similar building on the walls of Borobudur. Sari contains three chambers, with three upstairs’ room above them, which were entered by a wooden stairway to the second floor from the southern chamber. The floor was also timber. People think that the three top rooms may have housed a library, acted as a store for treasures or been used to accommodate the monks. It is very attractive to think of those upstairs rooms as libraries or copying rooms where monks worked, just as monks did in Europe’s Middle Ages, to copy out by hand the holy works of Buddhism. Parchment was not used in Indonesia for writing material, however, but “Lontar”, strips of Palm leaf holed at either end with a cord passed through, so they could be collapsed upon each other like the slats of a blind.
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