Voices from the Mountain: The Sailendra Inscriptions Discovered in Central Java and on the Malay Peninsula

The book is a study of the inscriptions produced during the Classic Age of Central Java to examine the historical evolution of the civilisation there during the eighth and ninth centuries AD. The focus is on the flowering of Mahayana Buddhism in the region under the royal patronage of the Shailendra dynasty. Attempting a systematic and comprehensive review of the Sanskrit inscriptions attributed to the monarchs of the dynasty, it shows that they provide a wealth of data on the promotion of Buddhism by the Shailendra kings and the place of Central Java as a Buddhist community. Several of the inscriptions relate to the establishment of legal rights for Buddhist religious foundations and paying homage to the divinities enshrined at the religious institutions to which the charters pertain. They also refer to the members of the family of the dynasty responsible for establishing the inscriptions and to the Buddhist clergy as well as visitors from outside. The work takes a look into the several theories that prior translators of the inscriptions have proposed based on the contents of the charters, especially the theories put forward by the Western scholars—of Dutch and French origin— and Indian researches of the twentieth century.