Candi, pura, kraton, masjid: Indonesian heritage words as official pages use them

The short answer

Four words do most of the work on heritage signs in Java and Bali. Candi is an ancient stone temple in Java, Buddhist or Hindu. Pura is a Balinese Hindu temple, defined in a Bali provincial regulation. Kraton, also spelled keraton and karaton, is a Javanese royal palace. Masjid is a mosque. Each definition below rests on how an official page uses the word, not on a dictionary, and XTOUR gives no etymology that a source it read does not state.

The table restates the sections that follow.

Candi: Java's ancient temples, Buddhist and Hindu alike

The Yogyakarta provincial tourism office uses candi for temples of both religions. Its page on Candi Sewu calls it a candi with a Buddhist character and sets it against Candi Prambanan, which it calls Hindu; the same page gives Sewu's original name, from an inscription, as Prasada Vajrasana Manjusrigrha, and says "sewu" is Javanese for a thousand.[8] Its page on Candi Sambisari calls that one a Hindu candi of the Shaiva school.[9] Candi, on these pages, names the building type, not the faith.

A candi is often a group rather than a single building. The tourism office describes Candi Sewu as 249 candi in all: one main candi surrounded by smaller ones it calls Candi Perwara and Candi Penjuru.[8] At Sambisari it counts one candi induk, the main candi, and three supporting ones; at Candi Ijo, one candi utama and three candi perwara on the top terrace.[10][9] On these pages "Candi Sewu" names the whole group, and the pages also write "kompleks candi", candi complex, when they mean the whole.

UNESCO's English follows the same logic: the two Javanese properties it inscribed in 1991 are the "Borobudur Temple Compounds" and the "Prambanan Temple Compounds", not single temples.[13][12]

The word also turns up in East Java place names. The Bromo park authority lists "Candi Belahan sumber tetek", on the slope of Mount Arjuno, as one of the four springs from which holy water is drawn for the Yadnya Kasada ceremony.[11]

Pura: the Balinese temple, as Bali's regulation defines it

Bali's Governor Regulation 25 of 2020, on protecting pura, sacred images and religious symbols, gives the formal definition in Article 1, point 7: a pura is "tempat suci untuk memuja Hyang Widhi Wasa dalam segala Prabawa atau manifestasi Hyang Widhi Wasa dan Atma Sidha Dewata atau Roh Suci Leluhur", a holy place for worshipping Hyang Widhi Wasa in all of his manifestations and the deified spirits of the ancestors.[1]

Article 5 of the same regulation sorts pura into six kinds:[1]

• Pura Sad Kahyangan: the principal temples, at the nine points of the compass in Bali.
• Pura Dang Kahyangan: temples linked to the journeys of holy men in Bali.
• Pura Kahyangan Jagat: public temples for worshipping Hyang Widhi Wasa in all his manifestations.
• Pura Kahyangan Desa: temples kept up by a customary village (desa adat).
• Pura Swagina: temples whose congregation is bound by a shared profession.
• Pura Keluarga: family temples, either Kawitan, bound by ancestral descent, or Sanggah/Merajan, the family's own place of prayer.

The regulation also names the people a pura belongs to: the penyungsung who venerate it, the pengempon who maintain it and prepare its ceremonies, and the pengemong who guard its sanctity and security. And it defines pratima as a religious symbol consecrated by ceremony and kept in a consecrated place.[1] What a visitor may and may not do inside a pura is covered, from the regulations themselves, in Bali temple rules as the provincial government states them.

UNESCO translates pura as temple. Its 2012 Bali decision calls Pura Ulun Danu Batur "the Supreme Water Temple" and Pura Taman Ayun "the Royal Water temple", and says the subak irrigation system "is part of temple culture".[14]

Pura is not confined to Bali. The Bromo park authority names Pura Luhur Poten, at the foot of Mount Bromo in East Java, as the place the holy water for the Yadnya Kasada ceremony is carried to.[11] The definitions above come from a regulation of the Bali provincial government, and XTOUR has not read an equivalent text for East Java.

Kraton, keraton, karaton: one palace, three spellings

The Yogyakarta palace's own website uses all three spellings. Its masthead reads "Karaton Ngayogyakarta Hadiningrat", its menu has a section on the "Prajurit Kraton" (the palace soldiers), and its articles write "Keraton Yogyakarta".[3][2] The same site writes that Sultan Hamengku Buwono I grew up at the Keraton Kartasura and knew the Keraton Surakarta well, so the word names a type of palace and not only Yogyakarta's.[4] UNESCO's 2023 decision on Yogyakarta settles on "the Kraton (Palace) Complex".[15]

A kraton is a sequence of spaces, not one building. The palace site describes open courts called plataran, joined by gates called regol, with two kinds of building in them: the bangsal, a roof on rows of posts with no walls, and the gedhong, a roof carried on walls. Its principal court, the Kedhaton, is the one the site ranks highest and calls the centre of the whole keraton.[3]

Two related words appear on the same site. Ndalem, it says, means a dwelling in general, and is used for the houses the Sultan lends or gives to his children and relatives, laid out like a small keraton on the same north-south axis.[5] And Tata Rakiting Wewangunan, the menu heading under which the site files its articles on the palace's layout and buildings, is the name UNESCO gives to the Sultanate's traditional management system.[15][2] For visiting the Yogyakarta palace, see the kraton guide; for the inscription, the Cosmological Axis of Yogyakarta.

Masjid: the Sultan's great mosque and the boundary mosques

On the palace website masjid is the word for a mosque (its Masjid Gedhe article describes the imam's niche, the prayer hall for the congregation and the Friday sermon), and it comes with qualifiers that carry meaning. The Masjid Gedhe, the great mosque, stands west of the northern square; the site dates its founding to 29 May 1773, on the initiative of Sultan Hamengku Buwono I and the court's chief religious official, and calls it an inseparable part of the Sultanate. It also says a crown ornament on the roof, the mustaka, marks the mosque as the Sultan's.[6]

The Masjid Pathok Negara are four mosques the Sultanate built at the four points of the compass, at Mlangi, Plosokuning, Babadan and Dongkelan. The site explains the name: pathok is a stake driven in as a boundary marker, or a rule or legal basis, and negara the state, so the phrase can mean either the state's boundary or the state's guideline.[7] Inside the palace the site lists a further mosque, the Masjid Panepen, among the buildings of the Kedhaton.[3]

Kagungan Dalem: belonging to the Sultan

The palace website files its buildings and heirlooms under "Kagungan Dalem", and it shows what the phrase does in practice. The Masjid Gedhe's article is titled "Kagungan Dalem Masjid Gedhe", and says the crown ornament on its roof is the sign that the mosque is "milik Sultan", the Sultan's.[6] Of the boundary mosque at Mlangi, now run entirely by its community, the site says the palace still posts an Abdi Dalem, a court servant, there "as a marker that the mosque is Kagungan Dalem".[7] The same home page applies the phrase to a pavilion, writing of the "Kagungan Dalem Bangsal Srimanganti" in its report on the 2026 Garebeg.[2] XTOUR's reading of the two passages together is that Kagungan Dalem marks something as the Sultan's property; the site does not give a one-line definition. Its ceremonies sit in a parallel section, "Hajad Dalem", and the home page's headline on the end of Sekaten in 2026 calls it "Hajad Dalem Sekaten"; see Sekaten and Garebeg at the Yogyakarta kraton.[2]

What XTOUR does not know

XTOUR does not give dictionary definitions or etymologies: it has not used a dictionary for this page, and none of the pages above states one beyond what is quoted here. It does not know how the words are used outside Java, Bali and the pages named, for example for palaces in Sumatra or mosques elsewhere. For the country, see the Indonesia page and, for Yogyakarta, the Yogyakarta destination page.