These Hindu-Buddhist revivals incorporate indigenous Balinese and Javanese traditions and huge festivals are held at Borobudur and other ancient sites. There are traces of Hindu-Buddhist religion throughout Indonesian culture. The symbol of Indonesia is the mythical Garuda bird, the mount of Vishnu. On Java only about ten per cent of the people follow the pure santri form of Islam, some thirty per cent follow a syncretic Javanese form of Islam - a blend of Sufism, Hinduism, and traditional religion, while the remainder adhere to traditional Javanese beliefs, Hinduism, and Buddhism. The religious complexity of Java is reflected in the hundreds of sects on the island.
Christians account for seven per cent of the population and are found in centres all over Indonesia.
Catholicism arrived with the Portuguese about 1512, who stayed for 150 years. The Dutch reached Indonesia in 1596 and brought Protestantism. In the early seventeenth century the English were rivals to the Dutch. There was Batak contact with Christianity in the 1850's and 1860's. It was also in the nineteenth century that Christianity spread from the coastal ports of Borneo and missionaries arrived among the Torajans on Sulawesi.