Borobudur Buddha head

A History of the World in 100 Objects

BBC

History

4.4 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 24 June 2010

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

A history of the World in one hundred objects arrives on the Indonesian island of Java. This is the series that offers a new history of humanity through the individual objects that time has left behind. These items are all in the British Museum and the series is presented by the museum's director, Neil MacGregor. Throughout this week Neil is tracing the great arcs of trade linking Asia, Europe and Africa around a thousand years ago. Today he has chosen a stone head of the Buddha that comes from one of the world's greatest monuments, the giant Buddhist stupa of Borobudur. Borobudur rises from a volcanic plain in the middle of Java, built from one and a half million blocks of stone and devised as an architectural aid to spiritual practice. Neil MacGregor reports from the various levels of Borobudur and describes the trade routes that brought Buddhism to South East Asia. He also explores the impact the discovery of Borobodur had on the founder of Singapore, Sir Stamford Raffles and his ideas about the importance of Javanese civilization. The anthropologist Nigel Barley celebrates the life and work of Stamford Raffles while the writer and Buddhist teacher Stephen Batchelor sums up the spiritual significance of Borobudur Producer: Anthony Denselow

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Thank you for downloading this episode of a history of the world a few degrees south of the equator.
0:20.0	It's hot and it's humid, but I and hundreds of other people on this steamy early morning
0:26.2	am about to set off on a walk that will take us around the world, or at least around a symbolic representation of the world, as it was imagined and built here sometime
0:35.4	around 800.
0:37.4	I'm at Borobudur, one of the greatest Buddhist monuments in the world and the huge square terrace pyramid in front of me
0:44.3	is nothing less than the Buddhist view of the Cosmos in stone and as I climb it I
0:49.8	shall be trading a physical path that mirrors the spiritual journey,
0:54.3	symbolically transporting the walker from this world to a higher plane of being.
0:59.5	It's quite a journey. When you're at Borobodur, you're standing on this great monument, you can see the entire world
1:11.6	around you, beneath you. It's an enormous experience of
1:15.1	spaciousness of freedom and a far vaster perspective. a history of the world in a hundred objects.
1:27.0	A hundred objects. Stonehead of the Buddha of Borobador in Java, between 780 and 840 AD.
1:55.0	This week we're tracing the great arcs of trade that linked Asia, Europe and Africa around a thousand years ago.
2:06.1	And my object today is a stone head of the Buddha from Borobudor.
2:11.6	Through it we can plot the huge network of connections across the China Sea
2:15.7	and the Indian Ocean by which goods and ideas, languages and religions were exchanged among
2:21.8	the peoples of Southeast Asia. I want to focus on the
2:25.3	immensely rich and strategically important island of Java because it's in
2:30.4	Java at the monument of Borobidor that we witness a spectacular example of how this network
2:36.0	of international trade allowed Buddhism to spread beyond the boundaries of its birth and
2:41.3	become a world religion.
2:44.0	Dominating a volcanic plane in the middle of Java,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.