The Many Ways of Being Human

6.6

Java and Bali

Early in the morning at Borobudur, a hill sheathed in up to two million stone blocks, a hand reaches through a lattice to touch a Buddha while the call to prayer rises from the villages. The chapter follows how Hindu, Buddhist, and Islamic layers stacked up on Java, in the country with the world's largest Muslim population, and why Bali kept its gods.