纪录片《大英博物馆世界简史》 059婆罗浮屠佛陀头像（3）（在线收听）

As you climb through the different levels, you take the material road to a spiritual enlightenment. On the lowest level, the sculptured reliefs present us with the illusions and disappointments of ordinary life, with all its troubles and shortcomings. They show us the punishments meted out to adulterers, murderers and thieves - a Dante-like vision of sin and its inevitable punishment. Higher up, the reliefs show the life of the historical Buddha himself, as he negotiated this imperfect world, moving from his princely birth and family wealth to renunciation and, eventually, enlightenment. After that, come single statues of the Buddha, meditating and teaching, showing pilgrims how to continue their journey towards the realms of the spirit. The monument, or stupa, is decorated with well over a thousand stone relief carvings, and peopled with hundreds of statues of the Buddha. Borobudur is without question one of the great cultural achievements of humanity.

But when Islam became the dominant religion in Java in the sixteenth century, Buddhist Borobudur was abandoned, and for centuries it lay overgrown and almost invisible. Three hundred years later, in 1814, it was rediscovered by the first modern visitor to describe it, the British administrator, scholar and soldier Sir Stamford Raffles. Raffles had been appointed lieutenant governor of Java after the British captured the island during the Napoleonic wars, and he became passionate about the people and their past. He heard about a "hill of statues" and he ordered a team to go to investigate. The news they brought back was so exciting that Raffles went to see for himself the monument which he at that stage knew as Boro Boro: