Prambanan temple is one of the largest Hindu temples in the world built in the 9th century. Prambanan Temple building soars into the sky as high as 47 meters with many amazing ornaments, the beauty of this Hindu Temple is no match. Prambanan Temple is located about 17 km to the east of the center of Yogyakarta City and can be reached easily, by private vehicle or by Trans Yogyakarta bus.
Legend of Roro Jonggrang Building Prambanan Temple
This legend starts from a story of earlier people who said there is a statue of a princess cursed into stone in Prambanan Temple, this story then legendary to all corners of the world.
In ancient times there was a beautiful princess from a kingdom named Roro Jonggrang. Princess Roro Jonggrang is very beautiful, her beauty makes all men fascinated until her beauty makes a prince amazed and wants to ask her. But not as easy as imagined, Princess Jonggrang instead gave the condition to be able to ask him, The condition is someone who wants to buy him must be able to build a thousand temples in one night. A very unreasonable requirement, but who would have thought, Prince Named Bandung Bondowoso had fulfilled the requirement.
Unexpectedly, Prince Bandung Bondowoso then asked for help from subtle creatures (supernatural beings) to build a thousand temples in one night. The unexpected happened when 999 temples had been awakened, Princess Roro Jonggrang instead told the entire villagers to light a campfire and stack rice with dimples so that the jinn (supernatural creatures) thought the dawn had arrived and ran away.
As a result of this, Prince Bandung Bondowoso was angry at the trick of Princess Roro Jonggrang's ruse and finally cursed Roro Jonggrang into stone to complete the 1000th temple. That's a story that's been legendary from time immemorial.
History of Prambanan Temple
Prambanan Temple is one of the largest and most beautiful Hindu temples in Southeast Asia. This temple began to be built in the mid-9th century during the reign of Rakai Pikatan of the Ancient Mataram Kingdom.
However, it is still mysterious, because the center of the kingdom moved to East Java in the late 10th century. Therefore, this magnificent temple also became abandoned and some were buried in the eruption material of Mount Merapi and slowly this area became a dense forest.
A few hundred years later then the ruins of the temple were rediscovered, and unfortunately at that time there was no known actual history of this temple. Thus created the legend of Roro Jonggrang which is told for generations by the people of the past.
Until finally began rehab or restoration that began in the 1930s and only completed about 20 years more between 1953.
That is a little more of an ancient story that is popular to this day.