The fact that the terms connected with rice cultivation are Javanese and not loan-words indicates that the island had some indigenous civilization when the Hindus first settled there.  Doubtless they often came with military strength, but on the whole as colonists and teachers rather than as conquerors.  The Javanese kings of whom we know most appear to have been not members of Hindu dynasties but native princes who had adopted Hindu culture and religion.  Sanskrit did not oust Javanese as the language of epigraphy, poetry and even religious literature.  Javanese Buddhism appears to have preserved its powers of growth and to have developed some special doctrines.  But Indian influence penetrated almost all institutions and is visible even to-day.  Its existence is still testified to by the alphabet in use, by such titles as Arjo, Radja, Praboe, Dipati (=adhipati), and by various superstitions about lucky days and horoscopes.  Communal land tenure of the Indian kind still exists and in former times grants of land were given to priests and, as in India, recorded on copper plates.  Offerings to old statues are still made and the Tenggerese[389] are not even nominal Mohammedans.  The Balinese still profess a species of Hinduism and employ a Hindu Calendar.

From the tenth century onwards the history of Java becomes a little plainer.

Copper plates dating from about 900 A.D. mention Mataram.  A certain Mpoe Sindok was vizier of this kingdom in 919, but ten years later we find him an independent king in east Java.  He lived at least twenty-five years longer and his possessions included Pasoeroean, Soerabaja and Kediri.  His great-grandson, Er-langga (or Langghya), is an important figure.  Er-langga’s early life was involved in war, but in 1032 he was able to call himself, though perhaps not with great correctness, king of all Java.  His memory has not endured among the Javanese but is still honoured in the traditions of Bali and Javanese literature began in his reign or a little earlier.  The poem Arjuna-vivaha is dedicated to him, and one book of the old Javanese prose translation of the Mahabharata bears a date equivalent to 996 A.D.[390]

One of the national heroes of Java is Djajabaja[391] who is supposed to have lived in the ninth century.  But tradition must be wrong here, for the free poetic rendering of part of the Mahabharata called Bharata-Yuddha, composed by Mpoe Sedah in 1157 A.D., is dedicated to him, and his reign must therefore be placed later than the traditional date.  He is said to have founded the kingdom of Daha in Kediri, but his inscriptions merely indicate that he was a worshipper of Vishnu.  Literature and art flourished in east Java at this period for it would seem that the Kawi Ramayana and an ars poetica called Vritta-sancaya[392] were written about 1150 and that the temple of Panataran was built between 1150 and 1175.

In western Java we have an inscription of 1030 found on the river Tjitjatih.  It mentions a prince who is styled Lord of the World and native tradition, confirmed by inscriptions, which however give few details, relates that in the twelfth century a kingdom called Padjadjaran was founded in the Soenda country south of Batavia by princes from Toemapel in eastern Java.