Borobudur was built from nearly two million mortarless stone blocks

Evidence

It took the labor of countless workers over many decades, dragging and carving close to two million blocks of volcanic stone without mortar, fitting them like a colossal puzzle. When it was done, Borobudur was a sermon in stone that a person could climb: walking its galleries from bottom to top, viewing the carved stories in order, the pilgrim would ‘read’ the whole Buddhist path with their feet and eyes. The Javanese say the architect Gunadharma lies still in the landscape — for a nearby mountain ridge, seen from the monument, has the profile of a sleeping man, which the people call the slumbering figure of Borobudur’s great builder, watching over his masterpiece forever. — , A Year of World Stories, 12928

Categorization

• SEED: The ‘sermon in stone’ idea — a building whose architecture itself teaches a doctrine — could anchor a piece on reading landscapes as texts.

Related

• Borobudur is one of the greatest Buddhist monuments in the world. (similarity 0.82)