"The mystic Plateau-Dieng Plateau" Pegunungan Dieng by bkarjee
Pegunungan Dieng Travel Guide: 83 reviews and 204 photos
Dieng Plateau is home to some wonderful old Hindu Temples dating back to 7th century. They are from the Great Hindu epic-Mahabharata. There are alltogather 8 temples in Dieng Plateau-all depicting heroes from the Mahabharatha. One difference that I noted in Java Hindu temples is that Mahabharatha characters are more distinctly protrayed and glorified than those of the other Hindu epic-Ramayana.
In India, temples dedicated to Lord Krishna (from Mahabharatha) are common but temples for other characters from Mahabharatha are rare. But at the same time, lot of other temples are dedicated to Lord Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma, Goddess Durga etc both in India and Indonesia.
My main attraction of visiting Dieng Plateau was the mystic Hindu Temples and the numerous dormant craters which keep generating sulphur steam all 24 hrs. The Hindu Temples are very old, all of them dating back to 600-800 A.D. That was roughly the time when Hinduism religion was dominant religion of South Asia. They say that Hinduism was brought to Java and other parts of South East Asia in 5th century A.D. by spice traders of South India. This statement may be true because South Indian Temples are distinctly different from those of North India. The reliefs are much more prominent and intricate/detailed in South Indian Temples. This pattern is also very much visible in temples of Java-Indonesia.
Hinduism is one of the Indonesias five religions.
Dieng is pronounced as Di-Yeng by local people and is a Sanskrit term which means 'The Abode of Gods'. As per the locally available literature, Dieng had a collection of more then 400 Viharas (home of the temple priests) but sadly, now only 10 or so temples remain in the plateau. The dissapearance of the temples is attributed to the eruption of Mount Sundoro in the 12/13th century, when all the temples and viharas were destroyed and the civilization around this place was erased off the world map. The entire valley was covered by volcanic ashes and there was nothing left. Everybody forgot about this temple town.
- Pros:Dieng has more mysteries then explanations to the temples
- Cons:Not much information available on the history of the ancient temples
- In a nutshell:An unforgettable experience
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