One of the best places to get a look at Srivijayan art is the Indonesian National Museum, which is popularly known as Museum Gajah, the Elephant Museum. One of the most impressive statues from the era is the Avalokiteśvara from Candi Bingin Jungut, which was taken from the ruins of an obscure Srivijayan temple site. The Avalokiteśvara was the bodhisattva of boundless compassion and could be seen as the very embodiment of this quintessentially Buddhist virtue. The word avalokiteśvara literally suggests the ‘lord who gazes down at the world’, suggesting the limitless compassion of the Buddha for the suffering of worldly beings. You can find similar Avalokiteśvara statues from the famous Buddhist university town of Nalanda, which was on the same pilgrimmage route as Srivijaya from the seventh to the tenth centuries. Many observers have also noted that the Avalokiteśvara of Bingin Jungut bears a close resembleance to the Salinedra art of Central Java, including the famous Buddhist stupa at Borobudur.
According to Indonesian press reports, the site of Candi Bingin Jungut is located about five hundred metres away from the Musi River and about a kilometre away from Bingin Jungut village. There is very little to see at the site today. The press report mention a few blocks of grey and black stone scattered about. There have been some Indonesian archaeological surveys done at the site since the 1990s but I am not aware of any findings being posted online, or even in academic journals for that matter. The stones are thought to belong to a candi, a temple, dating to the eighth or ninth century, which was when Srivijaya was at the height of its wealth and power. The imaginative visitor to Jakarta can get some sense of this collapsed temple by viewing this surviving example of its statuary at the National Museum.
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