Prambanan Minecraft Project -- by Tanner Henry

For my final project, I used Minecraft to replicate the Hindu temple complex of Prambanan, on the island of Java in Indonesia. If you want to go through the posts in order, just scroll to the very bottom and start there.

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Building the Prambanan temple complex took me quite a bit longer than expected, a bit over 40 hours in total. The longest single step was building the surrounding Perwara temples; each quadrant took 2-3 hours, which became quite monotonous. It made me appreciate that although the larger central temples are much more visually impressive, it seems like considerably more total work-hours probably went into the Candi Perwara. 

Also, walking around the finished complex, I was really struck with how impressively tall the temples are. The tallest, Candi Siwa, is 47 meters tall, which is definitely not the tallest temple in the world by any means, but it is definitely tall enough to loom dramatically over one’s head when one is standing beneath it. 

Lastly, one element that simply was not possible to reproduce in Minecraft was that of the relief carvings that cover so much of the complex’s surface area. These reliefs are very clear, organic, and beautiful, and I wished that I could have added some little element to represent them, but nothing quite worked or was small or flat enough. 

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1: Candi Siwa (Shiva’s temple) seen from ground level. 

2: A side view of the gate structure framing the entrance to the temple, as well as the walkway that runs around the temple’s base. 

3: A view of the empty room that serves as a passageway to the central chamber. Visitors who circumambulate the Candi Siwa, which often involves reading the narratives in the relief carvings, do so starting at the east side (by the empty room) and moving clockwise. 

4: the statue of Siwa in the central chamber. As the only lighting comes from the moderately narrow stone doorway, this room is quite dark.

5-7: the statues of Agastya, Ganesa (Ganesha), and Durga. Agastya is a Vedic sage, Ganesa is the elephant-headed god and remover of obstacles, and Durga is the fierce warrior-goddess aspect of Parvati. 

8: the actual statues. Siwa, Durga, Ganesa, Agastya. 

9. A cross-section of the Candi Siwa.

10. A WIP screenshot, showing the empty rooms which I included above the central chamber containing the statue of Siwa.

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Screenshots 1 and 2: Candi Wisnu, Vishnu’s temple. Vishnu is the preserver-god, whose avatars include such figures as Rama and Krishna. 

Screenshots 3 and 4: Candi Brahma, Brahma’s temple. Brahma is the Hindu creator god. 

Screenshots 5 and 6: the statues of Wisnu and Brahma. These statues actually still exist within their temples. 

7 and 8: the actual statues of Wisnu and Brahma. 

These are probably the temples that I’m least satisfied with. Having to work with 1-meter blocks meant that these two temples always looked either a little too squat or too slender, so I eventually just settled on the more slender form, which seems to conform more closely to the technical dimensions that I got from screen measurements. 

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This is the central vahana temple, that of Nandi, the bull vehicle of Siwa (Shiva). The bull is flanked by statues of Surya and Candra -- solar and lunar deities, respectively. 

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Screenshot 1: the 3 vahana temples. From left to right, the temples of Garuda (Vishnu’s eagle), Nandi (Shiva’s bull), and Hamsa (Brahma’s swan).  

Screenshots 2 and 3: Hamsa’s temple. 

Screenshots 4 and 5: Garuda’s temple. 

Screenshot 6 and 7: The statues of Hamsa and Garuda, the swan and eagle (again, in rather abstract form). Sadly, these two statues are likewise missing today.

8: the vahana temples, seen from the side. 

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This is one of the two identical Candi Apit, or “flank temples.” They are situated adjacent to the Candi Kelir in front of the northern and southern gapura, along the axis that runs between the two groups of main temples. 

The Candi Apit are unique in apparently being dedicated to goddesses. Their relief carvings and positioning suggest that they are dedicated to Saraswati and Laksmi, the goddesses of wisdom/knowledge and fortune/success, respectively. 

Sadly, like several of the other temples, the Candi Apit are now empty, and no longer have any statues in them. 

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The first screenshot shows a Patok shrine (candi patok), and the last two show a Kelir shrine (candi kelir). In Indonesian, “patok” means “peg,” and “kelir” means “screen.” Although these two types of shrine seem to be mostly identical in terms of appearance, the difference in naming is tied to their placement: the candi patok (peg shrines) are found in the four corners of the central complex, as though holding down a piece of fabric, whereas the candi kelir (screen shrines) are immediately proximal to the gapura, visually obscuring them. 

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The first screenshot here shows the outer wall, which I believe has completely crumbled. By referring to the aforementioned museum model, it seems that the outer wall was plain and flat-topped, and had four simple openings without any actual gates. 

The second and third screenshots show the gates leading into the center section, from an outside and inside perspective, respectively. This type of gate is a gopuram (Indonesian: gapura), a sort of tower- or gate-like structure found at the entrances of Hindu temples. The fact that the gapura are more central than the gates seems to indicate that the outer portion of the complex was not seen as part of the actual temple, and was markedly less sacred. 

The gapura of Prambanan are actually considerably smaller, shorter, and more gracile than those of many other Hindu temples. 

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Here are the 224 Perwara temples (”guardian temples”) that surround the central portion of the complex, arranged in four concentric squares. They seem to have served as either sites for meditation or worship, and/or residences for priests and their students. The Perwara temples situated at the corners of each concentric row are unique in being 2-sided. 

The layout of the Perwara temples forms the basis of the overall mandala design of the complex, therefore generating a stylized representation of the cosmos and its layers of increasing sacredness. 

Only 3 Perwara temples are presently standing, as earthquakes occur often in Indonesia. 

Along the path leading between the Perwara temples up to the central portion of the complex, there are 3 slight increases in elevation, each marked by a few steps. Given the constraints of working with 1-meter blocks, I chose to represent this with flat white squares. 

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I used these two images extensively as references; the diagram, combined with screen measurements, allowed me to lay down the building’s bases, and the model, from a museum in Jakarta, gave me a sense of the how the site originally looked. 

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Prambanan is the largest Hindu temple on the Indonesian island of Java, and was built to mark the shift in patronage in the Javanese Medang Empire from Mahayana Buddhism to Hinduism. It was likely also intended as a sort of response to the splendor of Borobudur (a Buddhist structure) -- these two temples are actually situated very close to each other, as shown in the above screenshot from Google Earth. 

The temple complex is dedicated to Shiva, or Siwa in Indonesian. Sacrifices and ceremonies were held in the central portion of the complex, and the hundreds of numerous, small Perwara shrines surrounding the center would likely have been either places for meditation or worship and/or cell-like residences for priests. 

In accordance with the overarching design principle of increasing sacredness, all of the temples in Prambanan have three parts: the foot (bhurloka), body (bhuvarloka), and head (svarloka), representing the realms of mortals, sages, and gods, respectively. In making the roofs of the temples, I dotted them with small bars and anvils that are meant to resemble the ratna, or diamonds, that adorn the temples’ roofs. 

Also, let me note that I will generally use the Indonesian names for the Hindu gods (e.g., Wisnu instead of Vishnu).