via the Deccan Herald, 29 July 2022: A story about the Candi Banon sculptures on display at the Museum Nasional Indonesia.
During my several visits to the Indonesian island Java, I have been drawn to the Museum Nasional Indonesia in Jakarta because of its rich collections of Hindu-Buddhist sculptures, inscriptions and ethnographic objects.
This museum is in a Dutch colonial building west of Merdeka Square near the Arjuna Wijaya fountain in central Jakarta.
In the front hall of the museum, the first sculpture that one comes across among numerous Hindu-Buddhist deities is a seated Ganesha statue from the eighth century AD.
The statue is made of andesite stone and was once enshrined in an ancient temple called Candi Banon in Central Java near Borobudur. In Bahasa language, Candi means temple, and Banon means brick. Statues were recovered from central Java in 1904 and then transferred to the Jakarta museum.
Source: The deities of the Candi Banon temple, Indonesia | Deccan Herald
