Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 2.djvu/267

INDIAN ISLANDERS. J2^3 will give us but a latitude of 7^ years. It is high- ly improbable, that the Hindus of Western India existed in numbers before or after this period, or we should surely have possessed memorials of that existence. The argument in favour of the arrival of such a colony will not be strengthened, even in the event of our crediting the earlier dates assigned to some of the stones, for between the very latest of these, 865, and the earliest date in figures, or 1220, there is a long blank of 335 years, during which it is not pretended that a single monument exists. From the year 1240, to the year 1356, 110 years, or even including the traditional date ascribed to the great temple of Boro Budur, 106 years, no authentic date whatever occurs. Dur- ing this long interval, it is not pretended that any great structure was raised in honour of the Hindu religion. It may, then, be conclud- ed to have been on the decline, and this is the pe- riod to which 1 ascribe the construction of the in- ferior fabrics of brick, which are, like the greater ^)uildings, dedicated to Buddhism, but apparently to a corrupted or degenerate form of it. The dates 1856, 1361, and 1363, on the ruins in mount Lawu, bring us to a new era in the history of Hinduism on Java, after the lapse of 106 or 110 years. It may reasonably be conjectured that these tem- ples are the work of a new sect of Hindus, perhaps