SINGARAJA, Bali: Before sunrise every morning, Mangku Borden Cahyadi walks from his home to the nearby Mas Penyeti Temple in Singaraja, a waterfront city in northern Bali.
As the Hindu temple’s priest, Cahyadi ensures the compound is ready to welcome worshippers looking to offer prayers to the gods before their morning commute to work.
On Apr 7 last year, Cahyadi arrived to find the contents of a drawer where he kept his keys disturbed, and the door to the temple’s storage room improperly shut.
“I immediately rushed to the storage room to make sure everything was there,” the 45-year-old priest told CNA. His heart sank when he realised some items were missing.
Among the stolen artefacts were two ceremonial plates made of silver, a centuries-old kris dagger and 12 figurines of Hindu gods and goddesses – all of which were adorned with jewels, gold and ancient coins.
“(The theft) has been very devastating for us, because (these objects) have been passed down for many generations. And now they are gone,” said the temple’s caretaker Putu Bagus Arya.
Cases of artefact theft like the one at Mas Penyeti Temple are rampant in Bali, a Hindu-majority island where every village has its own temple and every household, its own family shrine. According to some estimates, there are at least 10,000 temples in Bali.
The vast number of temples – most of which are outdoor and not well-guarded – and the countless artefacts they contain make Bali more prone to theft than other parts of the country, where similar objects can only be found in museums and historical sites.