While the details of rituals performed here are not perfectly known, we can say that pilgrims were expected to progress through each level of Borobudur as a meditative progress that tracked the actual development of highest Buddhist consciousness.Apparently this temple had a ritual function in relation to two other famous Mahayana temples in the same area. Those two other temples are aligned in a straight line with Borobodur, but we are unsure about the exact details of their ritual connection. Most likely, the king and brahmins went from the first temple and then on to the others, coming finally to Borobodur at the peak of the hill.Borobudur itself is a kind of man-made mountain.Following the local tradition of worshiping gods of mountains, Borobudur and the temples with which it was connected ritually ensured the continual agricultural fertility of the surrounding plain.The water that flowed down the hill from Borobudur was undoubtedly sanctified by the temple, just as at Dieng and other holy places in Java. As with other mountain shrines in ancient Java, their Hindu imagery suggested the idea of sacred waters running down from the cosmic mountain.We can see this in the images of the makara, the mythical serpent with an elephant trunk. These, like nagas, were cosmic guardians of the waters that flowed from heaven to the fields of earth below.Even the ritual of worshiping the shivalinga would entail pouring water, which then ran off the linga into a place for collecting it for local ritual purposes.