The Archaeological Survey of India Began Restoring Prambanan in Java on 8 July 2026, Where 54 Panels Carry the Ramayana in Stone

On 8 July 2026 India’s Prime Minister and Indonesia’s President stood together in the Prambanan temple complex near Yogyakarta, in central Java, and unveiled a plaque. The Press Information Bureau’s release says it marked the commencement of the Archaeological Survey of India’s conservation and restoration project at the site. Prambanan is where, in the ninth century, the Ramayana was carved into stone: by the count in one peer-reviewed paper, 54 panels, 24 on the Shiva temple and 30 on the Brahma temple.

What was launched on 8 July

The Press Information Bureau (PIB), the Indian government’s press office, describes the project as following an understanding the two leaders reached during Indonesia’s President’s state visit to India in 2025, on India helping to restore the temples at Prambanan. It adds that the Survey has earlier carried out extensive documentation of the Borobudur Temple Compounds, the Buddhist monument in the same region of Java.

The Daily Pioneer reports that the ceremony came a day after the two countries exchanged a Letter of Intent. It places the complex about 17 kilometres northeast of Yogyakarta city, and says the Prime Minister was briefed from a ceremonial panel titled “Indonesia-India Collaborative Cultural Heritage Conservation for Prambanan Temple Compound” before he unveiled the plaque.

ANTARA, Indonesia’s national news agency, reports that Indonesia’s President pointed to the Ramayana reliefs on the temple walls as evidence of ties between the two countries that go back more than 1,000 years. He also welcomed the agreement on conserving and restoring the complex.

On scope, an ANI report carried by ThePrint says the Survey is partnering with Indonesian authorities on the restoration and conservation of several smaller temples within the complex. India’s Prime Minister said Indonesia’s President had asked that the work be finished before 2029, according to IANS.

The story the stone tells

The Ramayana, which the tradition ascribes to the sage Valmiki, tells how Rama’s wife Sita is carried off by Ravana, king of Lanka, and how Rama wins her back with the help of Hanuman and an army of vanaras. What the Ramayana is covers the epic itself, and the Hanuman article follows his part in it.

At Prambanan the telling is walked, not read. Andri Restiyadi, an archaeologist at an Indonesian government research office, writing in the journal Berkala Arkeologi in 2020, describes the panels as carved on the inner balustrade, the low wall along the passage round each temple. They run clockwise, so a worshipper doing pradakshina, the ritual clockwise walk round a shrine, meets the scenes in order. Only someone walking that passage can see them.

The first panel, in Restiyadi’s description, shows Vishnu with four arms seated on a giant snake, his eagle beside him. The sequence begins at the Shiva temple, which holds 24 Ramayana panels, and continues on the Brahma temple, which holds 30. Hary Gunarto of Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, whose table gives the same figures, says the 54th and last panel shows Rama recognising his sons Kusha and Lava and naming them his successors. The Vishnu temple carries a second cycle of 30 panels, on the life of Krishna.

A Shiva temple that tells Vishnu’s story

Prambanan’s three main shrines honour the Trimurti, the three great gods Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, as the PIB release puts it. The central tower, dedicated to Shiva, is 47 metres high, according to both the ANI report and Gunarto.

Restiyadi points out that the Ramayana on the Shiva and Brahma temples is the story of an avatar of Vishnu, while the complex as a whole is built around Shiva. Scholars, he writes, have often called this an anomaly. His own reading is that Rakai Kayuwangi, the king who came to the throne in 855, had the story reliefs carved to mark a victory, and he labels that an assumption. Devotees hold that Rama and Krishna are both avatars of Vishnu, and Restiyadi counts Rama as the seventh and Krishna as the eighth.

The epic was already known in Java. Restiyadi cites an inscription of 880 that names Lord Rama among the beings invoked in its curse formula, and passages of the Old Javanese Ramayana, taken from a 1980 study by Santoso, that link Rama’s incarnation to Krishna’s.

How old Prambanan is, and who says what

UNESCO inscribed the Prambanan Temple Compounds on the World Heritage List in 1991. Its property page says Loro Jonggrang, the name for the main temple group, dates from the 9th century and that the original structures were built then. The PIB release also says 9th century. The same UNESCO page, though, speaks of the 8th century when describing the compounds and describes the property as characteristic of Shiva expression of the 10th century, so a reader will find three centuries in its text.

The best-known written evidence is the Shivagriha inscription, now in the National Museum in Jakarta. J. G. de Casparis read its date as Thursday, the 11th day of the bright half of the month Margasirsa in the Saka year 778, which is 856 in the Christian calendar, and linked it to the inauguration of the complex. Restiyadi accepts the date. He disputes who did the work, arguing that Rakai Pikatan began the temple and died in 855, and that Kayuwangi completed and inaugurated it. He says earlier writers who credited Pikatan with the inauguration cannot be right, since Pikatan was dead. Scholars also differ on whether a line in the inscription describes a king who resigned, as de Casparis read it, or uses a gentle word for a king’s death, as Boechari and Aichele argued.

UNESCO’s page records that the temples collapsed through earthquake, volcanic eruption and a shift of political power in the early 11th century, and were rediscovered in the 17th. Restoration work began in 1918 and was carried out again after the earthquake of 27 May 2006. The page counts 240 temples in Prambanan Temple itself and 508 stone temples across the wider compounds, which sit on 77 hectares in government ownership. It adds that the Shiva temple had not been rehabilitated when the text was written, and that technical studies on it ran in 2010 and 2011.

Putting the stones back

The method has been discussed in public. After a meeting in March 2026 between Indonesia’s Culture Minister, Fadli Zon, and a team from the Survey, ThePrint reported, citing ANTARA, that Survey experts proposed anastylosis, the technique of reassembling a building from the original stones found on the spot. New stones can be used where the structure needs them. The team also said that blocks scattered across the grounds make the work hard, because matching a stone to a particular temple takes careful cataloguing.

The minister put the project in a wider frame. “Prambanan is not a standalone complex but part of a wider cultural landscape with Sewu and Plaosan,” he said, naming two neighbouring temple groups. He also said Indonesia is open to digital tools and artificial intelligence to help identify and reassemble the stones.

The Survey’s record in Southeast Asia

The Ministry of External Affairs’ brief on India and Cambodia sets out the Survey’s longest-running overseas work. Responding to Cambodia’s appeal, the Survey restored Angkor Wat from 1986 to 1993 at a cost of about US$4 million, and the brief says India was the first country to offer such help. It began work at Ta Prohm in Angkor in 2003. The first two phases were completed in July 2015 at Rs 34.16 crore, the third phase began in November 2016 and was expected to finish in 2026, and the Hall of Dancers there was inaugurated in November 2022. A three-member Survey team has been at Preah Vihear since 2022.

ThePrint adds the Survey’s work at My Son in Vietnam, where it found Shiva lingas worshipped in the ancient Champa kingdom, at the Ananda Temple and Bagan pagodas in Myanmar after the 2016 earthquakes, and at Vat Phou in Laos, restored in two phases. The Art Newspaper reported in 2004 that the Ta Prohm plan was for five phases over 10 years at an estimated US$5.5 million, with work possible only from November to April, when the rains ease.

What has not been published

The reports opened for this article give no budget for Prambanan, no list of the temples the Survey will take up first and no work schedule beyond the target. ANI describes the first group only as several smaller temples. UNESCO’s page says the Shiva temple still needed study before a method of handling it could be settled.

India’s Prime Minister said at Prambanan, as IANS reports, that he had promised Indonesia’s President the project would be finished before 2029, and that he would return to see it.