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Dominating a volcanic plain in the middle of the island, Borobudur is a stepped pyramid built from more than one and a half million blocks of stone, around the year 800. It consists of seven mounting terraces, diminishing in size as they rise: four square terraces below, then three circular ones above. At the top of the whole structure is a large domed shrine.

As you climb through the different levels, you take a material road to a spiritual enlightenment. On the lowest level, the sculptured reliefs present us with the illusions and disappointments of ordinary life, with all its troubles and shortcomings; they show us the punishments meted out to adulterers, murderers and thieves – a Dante-like vision of sin and its inevitable punishment. Higher up, the reliefs show the life of the historical Buddha himself as he negotiated this imperfect world, moving from his princely birth and family wealth to renunciation and eventual enlightenment. After that come single statues of the Buddha, meditating and teaching, showing pilgrims how to continue their journey of renunciation towards the realms of the spirit.

When Islam became the dominant religion in Java in the sixteenth century, Buddhist Borobudur was abandoned, and for centuries it lay overgrown and almost invisible. Three centuries later, in 1814, it was rediscovered by the first modern visitor to describe it, the British administrator, scholar and soldier Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles. Raffles had been appointed lieutenant-governor of Java after the British captured the island during the Napoleonic Wars, and he became passionate about the people and their past. He heard about a ‘hill of statues’ and ordered a team to investigate. The news they brought back was so exciting that Raffles went to see for himself the monument which at that time he knew as Boro Boro:

Boro Boro is admirable as a majestic work of art. The great extent of the masses of building covered in some parts with the luxuriant vegetation of the climate, the beauty and delicate execution of the separate portions, the symmetry and regularity of the whole. The great number and interesting character of the statues and reliefs, with which they are ornamented, excite our wonder that they were not earlier examined, sketched and described.

The monument had been badly damaged by earthquakes and largely buried under volcanic ash. Even today, many stone fragments stand in rows around the site, surrounded by grass and flowers. Nevertheless, Raffles was enraptured; he knew at once that this was a supreme architectural and cultural achievement, and he collected two of the fallen stone heads of the Buddha.

Borobudur, covered with relief carvings and statues of the Buddha

Raffles’ rediscovery of Borobudur, and his later uncovering of important Hindu monuments on the island – for Java had embraced both Hinduism and Buddhism – led to a fundamental reassessment of Javanese history. Raffles wanted to persuade Europeans that Java was indeed a great civilization, as the anthropologist Dr Nigel Barley explains:

Raffles believed fervently in the concept of civilization; he never defines it, but it has a number of clear markers. One of them is the possession of a writing system, another is social hierarchy, and yet another is the possession of complex stone architecture. So, if you like, Borobudur was one of the proofs that Java was a great civilization – the equal of ancient Greece and Rome – and the whole of his collection at the British Museum, the Raffles Collection, and the whole of that book he wrote, The History of Java, is an attempt to establish that proposition.

The Raffles Collection includes the two heads and some fragments gathered at Borobudur, and a modest number of Hindu and Islamic works of art; but Raffles also collected objects that for him summed up the Javanese culture of his own day. This was a very particular kind of collecting: he hoped that the objects themselves would plead the cause of this Indonesian civilization,