Villagers give holy turtle royal cremation

Villagers give holy turtle royal cremation

Tri Vivi Suryani, Contributor, Klungkung

Hundreds of people from Tojan village showed up for a symbolic
cremation in Klungkung regency last Friday. Unlike ordinary
rituals where villagers cremate the remains of their loved ones,
that day they attended a cremation of a giant turtle.

The turtle was believed to be the incarnation of the god of
Segara Kidul, the god of the South Sea. That day, the sky was
cloudy and windy. This was unusual weather for Bali, which was
supposed to have entered its long dry season.

"It could be a sign from above," said a visitor on Klungkung
beach, the place where the ngaben (cremation) ceremony took
place.

An official of Klungkung administration, I Nengah Becik,
explained that the cremation was the first ever to be held on the
island.

"This is not a touristy event intended to amuse visitors. It's
aimed at purifying our soil and ridding ourselves of guilt,"
Nengah said. Everybody at the cremation cried silently hoping for
pardons from their ancestors and gods.

The story began three weeks ago when a fisherman found a rare
turtle measuring 224 centimeters long and more than 80 cm in
width. The huge turtle, weighing about 500 kilograms, was later
killed by hundreds of villagers.

A prominent religious figure at Tojan village said the turtle
was actually the god of the South Sea who wanted to monitor the
construction of the Hindu temple of Watu Klotok in the village.

The Balinese Hindu devotees strongly believe that a temple is
a holy site where ancestral deities and gods reside.

After they killed the turtle, they brought the slaughtered
animal to a market in Denpasar hoping that they could sell its
meat.

Turtle meat is a famous Bali delicacy and is used as an
offering during various religious ceremonies. But as the number
of turtles in Bali has sharply decreased, the provincial
government has declared it an endangered and protected species.

When arriving at Denpasar market, nobody was willing to buy
the turtle meat after seeing its markings on the sole of one of
its feet. The traders immediately assumed that this was a special
turtle.

After failing to sell the turtle meat, the villagers brought
the turtle back to the village and buried it immediately.

Then, strange things began to happen. The men who slaughtered
the turtle suffered from certain illnesses. They felt that
somebody had hit their bodies and left blue marks on their backs.
The other men fell into a trance.

A number of religious leaders in the village confirmed that
the turtle would have brought prosperity to the village. But when
the villagers treated the animal cruelly, they were punished for
their wrongdoing.

One of the villagers even claimed to see the grave of the
slaughtered turtle spurt out fresh blood "like a fountain".

The Tojan villagers decided to symbolically cremate the turtle
to expel bad influences on their lives and the village.

They exhumed the turtle's grave and treated it like a dead
human with a series of rituals to send its soul to heaven.

The pemangku (priests) performed a symbolic cremation by
burning an effigy, and the body of the turtle was again buried in
a proper way. The ceremony ended peacefully and the people sighed
with relief.

"It is hoped that the ceremony will cleanse our village. It
was a good lesson for us not to kill God's creatures, especially
when it was an incarnation of a holy creature," a visitor said.