When the Sultan of Yogyakarta put on a display of traditional dance for the Prince of Wales today, he probably thought that his performers were doing no more than re-telling one of the great stories of Indonesian mythology.

For Prince Charles, however — well, put it this way: perhaps it is just as well that the Duchess of Cornwall went home at the weekend. She might have wondered why the Sultan thought it was a good idea to tell the story of two women fighting over the affections of their royal lover.

Menak, the story was called, and concerned the struggle between a Javanese princess and a Chinese princess for the love of a Javanese king. Admittedly in the British version of the story there is no record of the female protagonists ever having flown off on the back of giant divine birds, nor of one of them — the Javanese heroine — stabbing her rival to death with a kris, the traditional dagger worn in those parts. But perhaps a little dramatic licence is permitted in adapting these mythic tales for a local audience.

The Prince’s host at the kraton, or palace, in Yogyakarta was His Excellency Sri Sultan Hamengkubowono X, a man the splendour of whose name contrasted with the apparent modesty of his life. He wore a brightly coloured but otherwise simple jacket, a skirt-like kain and black slippers, with a plain wooden kris tucked into his belt at the back. In a break with family tradition, he has even stopped at just the one wife.

On the last day of his tour of the world’s most populous Muslim nation, and his last foreign tour before he turns 60 at the end of next week, Prince Charles was there to spread the message about the importance of inter-faith dialogue.

He met religious students at the kraton, pupils at an Islamic religious school and British imams at the world famous Borobudur temple — who, being religious leaders from Britain, wanted to talk about football. “I reminded him of our imams v. clergy football match in Leicester, which he attended,” said Sheykh Ibrahim Mogra, assistant secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, who was in Indonesia on an imam exchange as a result of initiative set up two years ago by Tony Blair and the previous Indonesian president. “We were the winning team, and he awarded us the medal.”

Like all the other religious representatives Charles met, the imam was impressed with his genuine knowledge and understanding of Islam. “He talked about how Islamic art and in particular the geometrical patterns help us to connect with the nature of the cosmos,” he said. “He is so genuinely concerned with every individual, in what they do and what they are saying.”

His visit to the Krapyak pesantren, or madrassah, represented the fulfilment of a long-standing wish by the Prince to visit an Islamic religious school. Two years he was due to see one in Pakistan, but the visit had to be cancelled at the last minute because of terrorist activity in the region.

Encouraged by the British Council and British Embassy, the pesantren — one of the few in Indonesia to have Internet access and a language lab — is one of a number of schools which are forging links with the West, and has established an exchange programme with a school in Sussex.

At the Sultan’s kraton, he spoke to Inayah Rohmaniyah, who is doing a PhD in Islamic fundamentalism. “He really impressed us,” she said. “He said that with fundamentalists the problem is the way they interpret the text. He believes that the Islamic text is about harmony and the individual living in harmony with the environment.”

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