ROY E. JORDAAN CANDI BADUT AND THE TRAJECTORY OF HINDU-JAVANESE TEMPLE ARCHITECTURE INTRODUCTION I n a suburb of Malang, a city in East Java, lie the ruins of a small temple complex known of old as Candi Badut, named after the village long since annexed by the sprawling city. Soon after its dis- covery in 1923, B. de Haan, a Dutch architect working for the Archaeological Service of the Nether- lands East Indies, visited the site and reported that “all the fragments are pure central Javanese in char- acter, [thereby] demonstrating that the ruins are very old.” 1 Two years later the site of the Badut tem- ple was cleared of trees and other natural overgrowth and systematically excavated, which led to a plan to reconstruct the main temple, albeit partially. This partial reconstruction, finished in 1926, can be seen in a photograph taken by the Archaeological Service (fig. 1). The reconstruction drawing in the final archaeological report on Candi Badut gives a fair picture of the temple in its original state (fig. 2). In this article, I am less interested in the reconstruction of the temple than in the problem of explaining the presence of this Central Javanese–style temple so far away in eastern Java. Obviously, this question can only be answered if we know when, albeit approximately, Candi Badut was built. The archaeological literature shows that whereas there is no disagreement among archaeologists and art historians about Candi Badut’s Central Javanese character, the consensus on the founding date took more time to develop. Following the opinion of its talented restorer, de Haan, most archaeologists assigned the temple to an early phase of Central Javanese temple architecture, in the second half of the eighth century. Others have agreed with this dating, but ventured the suggestion that the temple was structurally altered in the thirteenth century. Only one art historian, E. B. Vogler, has objected to the early dating, contending that Candi Badut was built towards the end of the Central Javanese period, around 900 CE . 2 But Vogler’s ideas were rejected by R. Soekmono, who restated the hypothesis of Candi Badut’s eighth-century origins, a theory which is now widely accepted. In my opinion, how- ever, the current archaeological consensus is ill-founded. With the aid of hitherto neglected evidence I shall demonstrate that Vogler’s arguments were prematurely rejected. As for the relevance of this exercise, it may suffice to cite Vogler’s remark: “It goes without saying that it is of utmost importance for our knowledge of Javanese art to establish what views on this matter should be considered cor- rect.” 3 55 1 B. de Haan, Oudheidkundig Verslag 1923 (Weltevreden/’s-Hage: Koninklijk Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen [hereafter KBG ], 1924), 87; cf. Oudheidkundig Verslag 1925 (Weltevreden/’s-Hage: KBG , 1926), 9. 2 E. B. Vogler, “De stichtingstijd van de tjandi’s Gunung Wukir en Badut,” Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 108 (1952): 313–46. 3 Ibid., 313.