Historic Sarcophagi On Bali – The records on the existence and the discoveries of stone sarcophagi on the Island of Bali are scattered over some newspaper articles, in which precise information is commonly lacking, and a few articles in magazines “Nederlandsch Indie Oud en Nieuw”, Which I shall quote briefly.
The only expert on this subject the late Dr. P. V van Stein Calenfels, excavated one more or more sarcophagi in 1931, but he never published any report. This paper, therefore, can give no more than a rather gloomy account of a series of dubious records, gross negligence and desecretions of sarcophagi so far ass they have been found.
baca Juga : New Light On Some Borobudur Problems
At the end I will deal with the results of a recent excavation of two sarcophagi at Nongan, the contents of which have unfortunately been lost. Having finished the excavation, we visited the other sarcophagi, the main purpose being to study them closer and make additional notes.
Tanggahan-Peken
The first to discover a sarcophagus on Bali was the Officer P. de Kat Angelino although he did not grasp its meaning. In 1921 in the Pura Penataran in the village of Tanggahan-Pekan (susut, bangli) he noticed an object that must be sacred because it was covered by a white cloth. When, on his request the cloth was taken away, he saw what, according to the Balinese, was a stone ship, but he himself took it for a stone pig-trough. The photograph which accompanies his article, however, clearly proves that it was a small sarcophagus with typical knobs, two on the front and two on the back ; the lid was absent.