Hidden Base of Borobudor

The ancient 9^th century Buddhist temple site of Borobudor in central Java, Indonesia, was the focus of an ASEMUS research project first developed in 2003. Three institutions, namely the National Research and Development Centre of Archaeology, Jakarta; the National Museum of Ethnology, Leiden; and the Tropenmuseum, collaborated on the project. The champion of this project was Dr. Nandana Chutiwongs.

The Hidden base of the Borobodour, an UNESCO World Heritage Site in Indonesia, was discovered in 1885. Then it was uncovered and photographed in 1890-91, and once again covered, and has remained almost completely invisible since then.

Objectives:

The ASEMUS project was primarily meant to be an appeal to the public and to the scholarly world for an organised inventory, registration, and re-presentation of the existing documents on the base.

The aim of the project was to collect for the first time historical documents such as photographs and written records found both in Europe and Asia.

In February 2008, the National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden opened a gallery exhibition on the ‘Hidden Base of Borobudur” , based on the collection of 18th century photographs from the collection of the museum. This has received much attention from scholars, university students and the general public in the Netherlands and abroad. In September 2008, Dr Nandana Chutiwongs presented an abbreviated version of the paper delivered at The Yogya Seminar, now to the 12th International Conference of the European Association of Southeast Asian Archaeologists, at the University of Leiden. The presentation was well received by scholarly audience and interested participants (about 150 in all), who were also invited by the National Museum of Ethnology Leiden to visit the exhibition on the “Hidden base of Borobudur” in the Indonesian gallery of the museum.

Because the reactions to the presentation were most positive and encouraging, the VCM board of Trustees has decided to publish on the Virtual Collection of Materpieces’s website the whole reliefs of the Hidden Base of Borobudur partly analysed by Dr. Nandana Chutiwongs.”

The website was designed by Julie Trebault with Nandana Chutiwongs and a designer.