The Hindu deity of the sun, Surya

In the ninth century, artists in Central Java built hundreds of temples. Sculptors carved statues for these structures and also cast images in bronze for worship. The greatest of Java’s Buddhist and Hindu architectural monuments, such as Borobudur and the temple complex at Prambanan, are of unsurpassed profundity and refinement. Scholars believe that the fertile agricultural lands in this region helped produce the wealth allowing for tremendous artistic activity.

This unusually large and complete bronze sculpture represents the Hindu sun god Surya and his retinue. Surya is shown as a young man wearing a sort of sarong, elaborate jewelry, and a pair of boots (appropriate for a deity thought to have originated in Iran.) In contrast to the formal immobility of his pose, motion is suggested by the female archers drawing their bows at left and right, and the backward-rearing horses drawing the god’s chariot.

While there would originally have been an honorific parasol over the head of the main figure, the parasol now in place, though ancient, is not the original one.