Muaro Jambi Temple
The towering wax gourd trees that have wound their roots around the ruins of the Muarajambi temple complex in Sumatra, Indonesia, are the only living witnesses to what has happened here over the years.
Once the biggest and most important center for Buddhist learning in Southeast Asia, the crown jewel of the Golden Isle lay partially burned, buried and forgotten for centuries. Now, with the imminent opening of a new education center, ongoing excavations and sustainable tourism initiatives, this abandoned gem is set to shine once more.
How the Muarajambi temple complex was lost
Lying 26 kilometers east of the city of Jambi, the Muarajambi temple complex covers 12 square kilometers of land beside the muddy banks of the Batang Hari River. While only 12 of at least 82 ruins have been unearthed so far, archaeologists have determined that the compound was built and in use from the 7th to the 13th century CE.
Dubbed Asia’s “oldest university,” Muarajambi was once home to thousands of monks who lived and studied behind high city walls. The monastery’s influence spread far and wide across the Buddhist world, largely thanks to some notable students. Chinese master teacher Yiching studied here for six months in the 670s before returning home to share his translations. In the 11th century, Master Buddhist Atisha also spent more than a decade at the monastery before returning to India, where his teachings on Mahayana Buddhism spread to Tibet, Mongolia, Nepal and Cambodia. It is estimated that 300-400 million people still practice this branch of Buddhism around the world today.
Thought to have been the original capital of the Srivijaya kingdom, which reigned supreme in this area around a thousand years ago, it is likely that the site was abandoned in 1278 when Java’s Singhasari kingdom attacked the city and captured members of the royal family. Thick jungle and vegetation then advanced on Muaro Jambi, leaving the once-grand city shrouded for more than 500 years until its rediscovery by British soldier S.C. Crooke in 1824. Dutch colonialists conducted the initial excavation and survey of the site in 1920, but large-scale restoration efforts did not begin until local archaeologists took the project into their own hands in the 1970s, 25 years after Indonesia gained independence.
Unearthing Southeast Asia’s oldest center of education
The onsite team today is made up of a handful of Indonesian experts and scores of enthusiastic locals, working together to painstakingly uncover, record and restore the forgotten city brick by brick. In recent years, they have discovered the charred remains of a temple entrance, metal and ceramics workshops and the bronze head of a Buddha statue. They have also unearthed canals and parts of boats that transported citizens around the city, though the wooden dwellings they are believed to have lived in have disappeared without a trace.