Bujang Valley

The Bujang Valley (originally in Sanskrit: Scholars' Valley, now in modern Malay: Lembah Bujang) is a sprawling 5th to 14th century CE Indianised Hindu-Buddhist historical complex, which is the proposed UNESCO World Heritage List site of an area of approximately 224 square kilometres (86 sq mi), with the discovery of a set of new iron smelting sites, Sungai Batu site, enlarging the settlement area to 1,000 square kilometres (390 sq mi). Bujang Valley is situated near Merbok, Kedah, between 1,217-metre Mount Jerai in the north and Muda River in the south. It is the richest archaeological area in Malaysia. The area consists of ruins that may date more than 1,500 years old. More than 50 ancient pagoda temples, called candi (pronounced as "chandi"), have been unearthed. The most impressive and well-preserved of these is located in Pengkalan Bujang, Merbok. The Bujang Valley Archaeological Museum is also located that known as Sungai Batu, excavations have revealed jetty remains, iron-smelting sites, and a clay brick monument dating back to 110 AD, making it the oldest man-made structure to be recorded in Southeast Asia. The local rulers adopted Hindu-Buddhist Indian cultural and political models earlier than those of Kutai in eastern Borneo, in southern Celebes or Tarumanegara in western Java, where remains showing Indian influence have been found dating from the early 5th century.

Archaeological site data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).