Dynastic History|Candi Kalasan — The Charter That Named the Śailendras

In Śaka 700, that is 778 CE, a stone was inscribed in Sanskrit, in the Prānāgarī script of northern India, to record that the teachers of the Śailendra king had persuaded Mahārāja Tejaḥpurṇapāna Paṇaṃkaraṇa to have a shrine built for the bodhisattva Tārā and a dwelling built for monks. The village of Kālasa was made over to the saṅgha, with the pangkur, tavān and tīrip, the officers of the districts, standing as witnesses. This is the earliest inscription in Java to name the Śailendra house, and the grant rather than the building is its subject: the dues of one village, assigned in perpetuity, to keep a monastery running. The closing stanzas ask every future ruler, again and again, to protect this dharmasetu. An endowment lasted only as long as the next king chose to honour it.

Whether the Śailendras and the line of Sanjaya were two houses or one is an argument among historians rather than a fact in the record. The reading of two rival dynasties, set out by J.G. de Casparis in 1956, is contested by scholars working from the king lists that Balitung issued in 907 and 908, the Mantyasih I and Wanua Tengah III inscriptions, which can be read as a single succession.

The temple sits on a base of about 45 by 45 metres and stands some 24 metres high, its walls once finished with a plaster called bajralepa. The Yogyakarta heritage office records a single thorough restoration, by V.R. van Romondt between 1926 and 1930, and reports that the roof and much of the outer casing are damaged past reassembly.

📸 Cover: Candi Kalasan from the north-east, November 2013, Crisco 1492, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons