纪录片《大英博物馆世界简史》 059婆罗浮屠佛陀头像（7）（在线收听）

These contacts had been going on for well over a thousand years before Borobudur was built. People used to think that these connections were the result of conquest or emigration from India, but we now see them as part of a great maritime trading network, which inevitably carried not just people and goods, but skills, ideas and beliefs. It was this network that brought Buddhism to Java and beyond - travelling along the Silk Road to China, Korea and Japan, and sailing across the South Asian seas to Sri Lanka and Indonesia. You can, I think, say that Buddhism was the first religion to go global, but it was never an exclusive faith, and at roughly the time that Borobudur was rising out of the landscape, great Hindu temples were also being built on a comparable scale.

To construct monuments like these, of course, required manpower and money. Manpower has never been a problem in Java. It is so fertile, it has always supported a huge population, and in the years around 800 the island was immensely rich. Besides its agriculture, it was a key staging post for international trade, especially the inevitable spices - cloves above all - coming from further east. From Java these luxury goods would be shipped on to China, and all over the Indian Ocean.