TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Centuries-old artifacts reportedly discovered in East Java
Unearthed: A man holds up a coin marked with the year 1866 and inscribed with Javanese Sanskrit characters discovered at an ancestral worship site in a rice field in Gedog village in Blitar, East Java
Change Size
U
nearthed: A man holds up a coin marked with the year 1866 and inscribed with Javanese Sanskrit characters discovered at an ancestral worship site in a rice field in Gedog village in Blitar, East Java.(JP/Asip Hasani)
Artifacts that reportedly date back to hundreds of years ago have been discovered in an ancestral worship site in a paddy field in Gedog village in Blitar, East Java.
The worship site, commonly known as Punden Joko Pangon, is believed by locals to be part of the remains of the Gedog temple.
Recently, a coin and dragon head statue were found around the area of Punden Joko Pangon, prompting the authorities to secure the sites for further investigation.
All of the unearthed artifacts were found within 35 meters of Punden Joko Pangon.
“The coin we discovered is marked with the year 1866 and inscribed with Javanese Sanskrit characters,” Blitar’s Tourism and Cultural Agency head Tri Iman Prasetyono said on Tuesday.
The agency had secured the unearthed artifacts, Tri said, adding that it would submit a report on the findings to the Trowulan Cultural Heritage Preservation Agency (BPCP) in Mojokerto, East Java.
“We are waiting for the BPCP to visit the [Punden Joko Pangon] worship site for further investigation,” said Tri.
The discovery followed a finding of a rock resembling a giant head statue by a farmer named Toiran, who unearthed the sculpture in his corn field, located about 25 m away from the worship site.
The farmer said on Monday that he had spotted the statue three weeks ago when he was farming. He initially thought that it was an ordinary rock, but he later realized that the shape resembled a statue, Antara news agency reported.
People have also discovered some bricks that were suspected to be centuries old objects in the area.
Herry Setyo Budi, a local figure who once wrote a book on the Gedog temple, said that the site of Punden Joko Pangon, where the locals usually held nyadran (a ritual where villagers clean their ancestors’ graves), was part of the temple’s remains.
Gedog temple was also mentioned by Thomas Stamford Raffles in his renowned book The History of Java, Herry said.
He said that local people, who usually referred to the Punden Joko Pangon as a temple, once discovered a statue of the elephant-headed Hindu God Ganesha in the area, but it eventually went missing.
“I and a number of local villagers have tried to preserve and protect the sites, however, it is impossible to do that without the support of the government,” Herry said.
Gedog village administration officer Kaspadi concurred with Herry, saying that it was likely the locations of the findings of the artifacts were once the place where the temple stood.
Kaspadi estimated that there were other objects that were still buried underground around the location of the worship site.
Following the findings, Blitar Police have installed police lines to prevent looting at the locations of the findings of the artifacts, on which BPCP officials are set to conduct research.
“We installed police lines on two locations [on Monday] and put up another police line in a location [on Tuesday],” Blitar Police chief Adj. Sr. Comr. Adewira Negara Siregar said on the sidelines of a survey of the location. (bry)
