Sacred pools

Once a decade, on the full moon of the fourth month a stone is brought from Manukaya village to be bathed in the sacred pool of Tirtha Empul. The stone is carved with an inscription in Old Balinese, a language no longer spoken, deciphered in the 1920’s, recording King Chandrabhayasingha Warmmadewa’s construction of the bathing pools in the year 962 AD, on the full moon of the fourth month. Thus the connection between the stone and the pool has remained unbroken for more than a thousand years.