“Many people have seen the cobra. One of them even took a photograph,” said the temple’s priest, Jero Mangku Wania.
Wania said the cobra turned up at around 3 a.m., when some people arrived to perform their prayers. He said the temple’s caretakers had tried to find out about the cobra through supernatural ways and had declared that it came from three strands of hair from Danghyang Nirartha, the founder of the temple hundreds of years ago.
“In the past, the hair was kept and respected by locals. The hair has reincarnated into the cobra.” After the incident, local people agreed to make a statue of the cobra in the temple.