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.