via Free Malaysia Today, 21 March 2021: A popular account of the looting of the Sangurrah Inscription that somehow fails to mention that the stone has been returned to Indonesia more than a decade ago.
The Minto Stone is a 1,100-year-old stone slab, two metres tall and weighing close to four tons known to Indonesians as the Prasasti Sanggurah, or Sanggurah Inscription.
It is inscribed in ancient Javan, or Kawi, and apparently designates the local village as an administrative area and bestows certain rights on the local ruler.
The most interesting part is a curse, a lengthy description of the dire and gruesome fate awaiting anyone who dares to remove the stone from its place.
From the rough translation, it seems the punishments include disembowelment, being eaten by tigers, bitten by snakes, struck by lightning, torn by giants, drowning, cast to the four winds, and reincarnation as a madman.
Despite these warnings, the stone was removed 200 years ago from its original position on the outskirts of Malang and is now in the garden of a cottage in Roxburghshire, Scotland.
Source: How Java’s Minto Stone ended up at a Scottish cottage | Free Malaysia Today (FMT)
