Human sacrifice at Prambanan

Abstract

While the discovery of a human skeleton is nothing extraordinary in Indo nesian archaeology, that of one in the central area of the famous Hindu temple complex of Candi Prambanan in Central Java, which dates from the first half of the ninth century A.D., does call for an explanation. Such explanations as have been put forward up to now have all been unsatis factory. Although an explanation in terms of human sacrifice was sug gested at the time, the idea received scant recognition in the archaeological literature. Only after another human skeleton was found in a neighbouring Buddhist temple complex could the possibility of the practice of human sacrifice in ancient Central Java no longer be ignored. The phenomenon remained a difficult topic among archaeologists, however. The problem that hampered scholarly progress was the choice of the appropriate ideological framework in which to place such sacrificial practices: Hindu-Buddhist religious ideas or Javanese folklore. It is this problem that we want to discuss and try to find a solution for in this article.