GODS AND
DEMONS: OFFERINGS AND EXORCISMS
Good and evil, right and left, gods and demons, are banded into
two opposing factions, constantly at war, in which the weapons
are their magic powers and the stakes the lives and interests
of the Balinese themselves, compelling them to propitiate both
sides so as not to attract the wrath of either party. Only by
the proper balance between the negative and positive forces are
they able to maintain the spiritual harmony of the community.
This is particularly important at certain times, such as childbirth,
menstruation, death in the village, or when a crime that disturbs
the magic balance of the village has been committed; circumstances
that weaken and pollute the protective life power of the individual
or of the village and render them vulnerable to the attacks of
evil.
The antithesis of the state
of normalcy, of health and cleanliness (sutji', ening) is for
a person or a community to be sebel, unclean, physically and spiritually
polluted and, run down, a condition that must be cured by cleansing
factors and ceremonies to give added strength to the soul the
making of offerings, the use of purifying water and fire, and
the recitation of secret magic words by a qualified priest, the
three elements of Balinese ritual.
To counterbalance the healthy
influence of the gods who produce cleanliness, luck, and fertility,
there are evil spirits responsible for all illness and misfortune.
Among the countless demons that crowd the spirit world of the
Balinese, some, like the raksasas, are inoffensive giants and
ghouls that belong to literature, but the invisible causes of
evil are disagreeable butas and kalas, symbols of malice and coarseness,
that haunt desolated places, the seashore, and the deep forests
and infest the dangerous " parts of the village, the crossroads
and the cemetery. The butas and Was have no other mission on earth
than to annoy and persecute humans, making people ill, disturbing
and polluting everything. They can go into people's bodies and
make them insane or turn them into idiots.
The tangible gifts to the
gods, the offerings (pebanten) like the presents given to human
beings, consist of fruits, cakes, rice, flowers, money, chickens,
and pigs. They are given in the same spirit as presents to the
prince or to friends, a sort of modest bribe to strengthen a request;
but it is a condition that they should be beautiful and well made
to Please the gods and should be placed on well-decorated high
altars. Their devils, however, the Balinese treat with contempt,
and the offerings in tended for evil spirits are generally a smelly
mess of half-decayed food which is disdainfully thrown to the
ground. The deities are served with the essence (sari) of the
offerings, which is fanned towards the place they supposedly occupy,
carried by the rising
smoke of the incense. Ordinary people take what is left, the material
part is later taken home and eaten. Thus both gods and the donors
enjoy the banquet. The magic people, the many Balinese possessed
by supernatural powers, are not allowed to touch these left-overs
from the feast of the gods, the food with out the essence.
Offerings to evil spirits
are in themselves polluted and are left to be eaten by the village
scavengers, the hungry dogs. The devils receive elaborate sacrifices
on certain occasions and on special days, every fifth (klion)
and every fifteenth (kadjeng klion) day; but, as they are greedy
by nature, the little offerings given them every day a few grains
of rice, a few flower petals, and a coin or two - are enough to
distract them from their, evil intentions. They become particularly
obnoxious at sundown, and on these special dates the women of
each household place in front of their gates trays of food, flowers,
and money, next to a burning coconut husk.
Great calamities will fall
upon the village when the butas predominate or when they are angry.
Then they cause epidemics, the loss of crops, and so forth, and
only by the most elaborate ceremonies of purification and, great
offerings of blood sacrifices can the pollution of the village
be wiped out.
Nyepi. Once a year, at
the spring equinox, every community holds a general cleaning-out
of devils, driving them out of the village with magical curses
and rioting by the entire population. This is followed by a day
of absolute stillness, the suspension of all activity, from which
the ceremony takes its name. Nyepi marks the New Year and the
arival of spring, the end of the troublesome rainy season, when
even the earth is said to be sick and feverish (panas) . It is
believed that then the Lord of Hell, Yama, sweeps Hades of devils,
which fall on Bali, making it imperative that the whole of the
island be purified.
There is great excitement
all over Bali at this time, and on the days before nyepi everybody
is busy erecting altars for the offerings and scaffolds for the
priests at the village crossroads. Since no cooking is allowed
on nyepi' day, the food for the next day is prepared and there
are melis processions all over Bali to take the gods to the sea
for their symbolical bath. The celebration proper extends over
a period of two days: the metjaru, the great purification offering,
and nyepi', the day of silence. On the first day the Government
allows unrestricted gambling and cockfighting, an essential part
of the ceremony, because the land is cured by spilling blood over
impure earth.
In Den Pasar round after
round was fought all morning; crowds of men gathered in the meeting
hall of every bandjar, each bringing his favourite fighting cock
in a curious satchel of fresh coconut leaves, handle and all,
woven over the cock's body, its tail left sticking out so as not
to damage the feathers. Each satchel was cut open and the cocks
presented to the audience to announce the matches. The betting
began; excited enthusiasts waved strings of kepengs and silver
ringgit and yelled at each other. A vicious steel blade five inches
long and sharp as a razor was attached to the right foot of each
cock in place of the natural spur, which was cut off. When both
contenders were ready and the bets bad been placed, the referee
and the time-keeper went to their places and gave the signal to
start, beating a small gong.
The two cocks, held by their
owners, were brought to the middle of the arena, provoked against
each other and released. The audience became tense, and the cocks
attacked each other with such fury that the eye could not follow
them; there were only flashes of the polished steel of the spurs
in the cloud of flying feathers. Each round lasted only a few
seconds; suddenly the two cocks stopped and stood motionless in
front of each other, both streaming blood, until one staggered
and fell dead,
the winner crowing and still pecking furiously at the corpse.
it frequently happens that both cocks are wounded but the survivor
is healed and often lives to fight many battles. A cock is disqualified
if it runs away at the beginning; otherwise the fight is to death.
When a cock is wounded but it is considered that it can go on.
fighting, its owner gives it strength to go on with special massages,
blowing his own breath into its lungs; then it is not rare for
a badly wounded cock to come out triumphantly over an apparent
winner. Should both cocks refuse to fight, they are placed inside
a basket, where one cannot avoid being killed. Hundreds of roosters
are sacrificed in this manner in every village on the day before
nyepi".
The Balinese cannot understand
the attitude of the sentimental Dutch, who have forbidden cockfights.
To them a rooster is as dead in the kitchen as after a cockfight;
besides, cockfights are staged as a religious duty, as a sport
that gives an opportunity for a little gambling and as a way to
provide food for the next day. The dead roosters are taken home
and cooked for the nyepi' meal. After the cockfights, in Den Pasar
it is customary to give a banquet for the children of each bandjar,
a double row of beautifully decorated trays filled with sweets
and cakes served to them by the bandjar officials.
Before sunset the evil spirits
had to be lured and concentrated at the great offering, the metjaru,
then cast out by the powerful spells of the priests of the village.
Facing towars kangin, the East of Den Pasar, were tall altars
filled with offerings: one for the Sun and for the Trinity (sanggah
agung), one for the ancestors, and a third for the great Was,
the evil gods. In the centre of the.ground an elaborate conglomeration
of objects was arranged: food of all sorts, every kind of strong
drink, money and house utensils, hundreds of containers of banana
leaf with a sample of every seed and fruit that grew on the island,
and a piece of the flesh of every wild and domestic animal in
Bali (a small piece of dried tiger flesh was pointed out) ; all
arranged in the shape of an eight-pointed star representing the
Rose of the Winds, the whole surrounded by a low fence of woven
palm-leaf. The colours; of the four cardinal points were indicated
by a sacrificed black goat for kadja, the North, a white goose
for kangin, the East, a red dog for Mod, the South, and a yellow,
calf for kauh, the West. Small pieces of black, white, red, and
yellow cloth were placed over each of the animals to give further
emphasis to their colour. A chicken with feathers of five colours
was placed in the centre, next to a small circular Rose of the
Winds made of rice dyed in the eight different colours of the
cardinal directions, with a centre of mixed rice of the eight
colours. The collection of all these ingredients had taken months
and the majority were wilted and decomposing. On the ground at
the right of the metjaru was spread a bit of rice flour in which
an image of Batara Kala was drawn and consecrated by a priest,surrounded
by a little bamboo fence to keep the dogs from walking over it.
Facing the offerings were
the scaffolds for the priests. First a long shed in which eight
pedandas, the Brahmanic high priests, sat in a row, wearing their
red and gold mitres and with their elaborate paraphernalia of
state, ready to pray and dedicate the offerings for the gods.
On the end of the shed was a smaller, lower shed where sat the
sunguhu , the low-caste priest in charge of dedicating the offerings
to the evil spirits, his specialty. These nine priests chanted
powerful mantras, accompanied by swift gestures of the hands and
fingers, and rang their bells alternately. There were seven pedanda
siwa,, one pedanda budda., and one sunguhu - a priest for each
of the cardinal directions.
The demons were thus lured
to the great offering and then expelled from the village by the
curses of the priests. The Regent of Badung joined in the prayers
with his entire family, kneeling in front of the Sun-altar and
making reverences while the nine priests rang bells and chanted
formulas. When they finished, " new fire " and holy
water were given by the priests to the beads of each bandjar,
and the poor were allowed to loot the offerings for money and
other useful objects. Firecrackers exploded in every direction
and all the kulkuls in Den Pasar were beaten furiously, the populace
ran all over town in groups, often with their faces and bodies
painted, carrying torches on the end of long poles, beating drums,
gongs, tin cans or anything that made a noise, yelling at the
top of their lungs: " Megedi, megedi Get out! Get out! "
- beating the trees and the ground, to scare away the unsuspecting
butas who had assembled to partake of the offerings. From a dark
comer came a deafening din that seemed produced by the frightened
devils themselves, but our flashlight revealed a gang of naked
children beating empty gasoline. cans The noisy torch parades
swept over town until, they were exhausted, long after midnight.
The following day, nyepi,
was supposed to be one of absolute stillness, a day when no fires,
no sexual intercourse, and no work of any sort were permitted.
There was no traffic on the roads and only by special permit and
the payment of a heavy fine could the cars of foreigners drive
through a town. In most Balinese villages the people were not
even allowed out of their houses, especially in North Bali, where
the nyepi regulations are strict. In Den Pasar it was forbidden
even to light a cigarette, but people went out visiting as on
a holiday. Curious tug-of-war games (med-medan) were organized
there for the amusement of the young people; in bandjar Kaliungu',
men on one side, girls on the other, pulled a long rattan until
one side defeated the other, but in bandjar Sesetan a shouting
crowd of boys stood facing a group of girls; the boys charged
as in a football game and captured one girl, who then bad to be
rescued by her friends in a rough free-for-all. Everybody tugged
and pulled and the poor prisoner, wild-eyed and with her hair
loose, was so roughly handled in the desperate effort to free
her that she fainted. But someone walked over to her and unceremoniously
emptied a bucket of cold water on her bead so she would revive
and the game could proceed; when the girl was rescued the men
captured another. Although the unique game is not played outside
of the neigbbourhood of Den Pasar and then only on day, the Balinese
insisted it had no significance of any sort and that its object
was purely play.
