Prambanan in the context of "Sewu"

Rice production in Indonesia is an important part of the national economy. Indonesia is the third-largest producer of rice in the world.

Rice is the staple food in the Indonesian diet, accounting for more than half of the calories in the average diet, and the source of livelihood for about 20 million households, or about 100 million people, in the late 1980s. Rice cultivation covered a total of around 10 million hectares throughout the archipelago, primarily on sawah. The supply and control of water is crucial to the productivity of rice land, especially when planted with high-yield seed varieties. In 1987 irrigated sawah covered 58 percent of the total cultivated area, rainfed sawah accounted for 20 percent, and ladang, or dryland cultivation, together with swamp or tidal cultivation covered the remaining 22 percent of rice cropland.

Devaraja (Sanskrit: देवराज, romanized: Devarāja) was the religious and political concept of the "god-king" or deified monarch in ancient and medieval India and Southeast Asia. The concept of the devaraja developed from both Hinduism and other, local traditions depending on the area. It held that that the king was a divine, universal ruler and a manifestation of the gods (often attributed to Shiva or Vishnu) on Earth. The concept is closely related to the Indian concept of chakravarti (universal emperor). In the political context, it was viewed as the divine justification of a king's rule. The concept was institutionalised and expanded in ancient Java and Cambodia, where monuments such as the Prambanan and the Angkor Wat were erected to celebrate the king's divine rule on Earth.

The devaraja concept of the divine status of kings was adopted by the Indianised Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms of Southeast Asia through the Indian Brahmin scholars that were deployed in the courts there. It was first adopted by Javanese kings, and thereafter by various Malay kingdoms, the Khmer Empire, and the Thai monarchies.

The Legend of Roro Jonggrang (Javanese: ꦫꦫꦗꦺꦴꦁꦒꦿꦁ, romanized: Rara Jonggrang) is a Javanese popular legend (folktales) from Central Java telling the story of love and betrayal, the warrior and the cursed princess. It also explains the mythical origin of Ratu Boko (Javanese: ꦫꦠꦸꦧꦏ, romanized: Ratu Baka) palace, Sewu temple, and the Durga statue in Prambanan temple compound. The title Roro (pronounced /rɔrɔ/ in Javanese) is an ancient honorific title to address unmarried princesses and female nobility, thus, the name Rara Jonggrang in Javanese means 'slender maiden'.

It is quite difficult to define Indonesian art, since the country is immensely diverse. The sprawling archipelago nation consists of 17,000 islands. Around 922 of those permanently inhabited, by over 600 ethnic groups, which speak more than 700 living languages.

Indonesia also has experienced a long history, with each period leaves distinctive art. From prehistoric cave paintings and megalithic ancestral statues of Central Sulawesi, tribal wooden carving traditions of Toraja and Asmat people, graceful Hindu-Buddhist art of classical Javanese civilization which produced Borobudur and Prambanan, vivid Balinese paintings and performing arts, Islamic arts of Aceh, to contemporary arts of modern Indonesian artists. Both Indonesian diversity and history add to the complexity of defining and identifying what is Indonesian art.