Javanese architecture and sculpture are no doubt derived from India, but the imported style, whatever it may have been, was modified by local influences and it seems impossible at present to determine whether its origin should be sought on the eastern or western side of India.  The theory that the temples on the Dieng plateau are Chalukyan buildings appears to be abandoned but they and many others in Java show a striking resemblance to the shrines found in Champa.  Javanese architecture is remarkable for the complete absence not only of radiating arches but of pillars, and consequently of large halls.  This feature is no doubt due to the ever present danger of earthquakes.  Many reliefs, particularly those of Panataran, show the influence of a style which is not Indian and may be termed, though not very correctly, Polynesian.  The great merit of Javanese sculpture lies in the refinement and beauty of the faces.  Among figures executed in India it would be hard to find anything equal in purity and delicacy to the Avalokita of Mendut, the Manjusri now in the Berlin Museum or the Prajnaparamita now at Leyden.

6

From the eleventh century until the end of the Hindu period Java can show a considerable body of literature, which is in part theological.  It is unfortunate that no books dating from an earlier epoch should be extant.  The sculptures of Prambanam and Boroboedoer clearly presuppose an acquaintance with the Ramayana, the Lalita Vistara and other Buddhist works but, as in Camboja, this literature was probably known only in the original Sanskrit and only to the learned.  But it is not unlikely that the Javanese adaptations of the Indian epics which have come down to us were preceded by earlier attempts which have disappeared.

The old literary language of Java is commonly known as Basa Kawi or Kawi, that is the language of poetry.[420] It is however simply the predecessor of modern Javanese and many authorities prefer to describe the language of the island as Old Javanese before the Madjapahit period, Middle-Javanese during that period and New Javanese after the fall of Madjapahit.  The greater part of this literature consists of free versions of Sanskrit works or of a substratum in Sanskrit accompanied by a Javanese explanation.  Only a few Javanese works are original, that is to say not obviously inspired by an Indian prototype, but on the other hand nearly all of them handle their materials with freedom and adapt rather than translate what they borrow.

One of the earliest works preserved appears to be the Tantoe Panggelaran, a treatise on cosmology in which Indian and native ideas are combined.  It is supposed to have been written about 1000 A.D.  Before the foundation of Madjapahit Javanese literature flourished especially in the reigns of Erlangga and Djajabaja, that is in the eleventh and twelfth centuries respectively.  About the time of Erlangga were produced the old prose version of the Mahabharata, in which certain episodes of that poem are rendered with great freedom and the poem called Arjuna-vivaha, or the marriage of Arjuna.