THE CALENDAR

The calendar that regulates the social and religious life of Bali is an intricate mechanism by which not only all communal and private festivals are established, but even the most ordinary actions of the Balinese are determined. No Balinese can hope for success in any undertaking unless it is performed on the exact auspicious day set aside on the calendar for the purpose;. a wedding, a tooth-filing, a cremation, the occupation of a new house, take place only during special weeks dedicated to the affairs of human beings., while there are other similar weeks and days for activities concerning cattle, fowl, fish, trees, and bam, boo (consecutive periods of seven days called ingkel: wong, sato, mina, manuk ' taru, and buku) . The Balinese use two simultaneous systems of time-calcula tion: one, the saka, the Hindu solar-lunar year, similar to ours in duration, twelve months, moons," by which they observe the full (purnama) and the "dark" or new moons (tilem) important for agriculture, for nyepi, and for the festivals of the mountain people. The other, the wuku year, the so-called native or Javanese-Balinese year of 210 days, is not officially divided into months, but into weeks, ten of them running parallel and simultaneously, from a week of one day in which every day is called luang, a week of two days, one of three, of four, five, and so forth, up to a week of ten days. Each day of each of the ten weeks receives a special name, the combination of names deter mining the character of a date as a lucky or unlucky day.

Thus every day theoretically receives ten different names, plus the month of the saka year and the " age " of the moon, according to whether it is ' crescent or waning; for instance, Sunday, the A of November of 1934, the beginning of the wuku year, was, according to them: saka year 1856, wuku of sinta, ingkel wong (good for humans) , redite, paing, paseh, tungleh, sri, sri, danggu - only one endowed with the sakti and the knowledge of a high priest could keep track of such a tangle of names. Ordinary Balinese reckon simple dates, auspicious days for making offerings and for the principal feasts, by the combination of day~names of the seven- and five-day weeks, by which names everyday dates are recorded. The common people also observe the week of three days by which the village market day is established,held in rotation every day in one of the villages that work in groups of three Other date names are ' used mainly for magic and religious purposes, making of the calendar a science so complicated in itself that it is practised mainly by specialists, generally the Brahmanic priests and witch-doctors, who, by the ownership of intricate charts (tika) with secret symbols painted on paper or carved in wood, and of palm-leaf manuscripts (wariga) by which the lucky or unlucky dates are located, make the people dependent on them for this purpose, because the Balinese are obliged to consult them.for good dates for every special undertaking and have to pay for the consultation.

Galunggan, Nyepi' is the acknowledged New Year feast of the solar-lunar year, but the Balinese celebrate another " new year " in the great holiday of galunggan, when the ancestral spirit come down to earth to dwell again in the homes of their descendants. The ancestors supposedly arrive five days before the day of galunggan, receive many offerings, and go back to heaven after ten days, five days before kuninggan, the feast of all souls.

Every home and all implements were provided with offerings for galunggan, the old utensils renewed and the baskets washed. On all the roads, at the gate of every home, tall penyors were erected, meant perhaps to be seen from the summits of the mountains where the gods dwell, together with a little bamboo altar from which hung a lamak, one of those beautiful mosaics on long strips of palm-leaf. For this occasion the lamaks were over thirty feet long and had to hang from the tops of the coconut trees.

Everybody wore new clothes and the whole of Bali went out for a great national picnic. Everywhere there were women with offerings on their heads and many old men dressed for the occasion in old-fashioned style, gold kris and all, although with an incongruous imported undershirt. The younger generation preferred to tear all over the island in open motor-cars, packed like sardines, dressed in fancy costumes, many young men in absurd versions' of European clothes, the girls wearing their brightest silks and their best gold flowers in their hair. After visiting the village temple the gay groups went to the many feasts held on this and the following days all over the island. At this time the peculiar monsters called barong - a great fleece of long hair with a mask and gilt ornaments, animated by two men - were " loose " and free to go wherever they pleased. Everywhere on the road one met the cavorting holy barongs, who had become foolish for the day, dancing down the roads and paths, followed breathlessly by their orchestras and attendants.

In the temple of Gelgel, the former capital, there was a great feast where plays were given and violent " kris dances " were staged - when crazed men in a trance pretended to stab themselves and tore live chickens with their teeth to show their wickedness; but a more serene feast was celebrated in the jungle temple near the summit of the Batukau. There the -mountain people brought offerings to the Batukau spirit while the Elders prepared the banquet in the spring underneath giant tree-ferns; performing afterwards a majestic baris dance, each dressed in black and white magic cloth, mimicking a stately battle with their long spears.

Ten days after galunggan came the day kuninggan, when new offerings and new lamaks were made and coconut husks were burned in front of every gate. This was the date of the temple feast of Tirta Empul, the sacred baths near Tampaksiring, and all morning people bathed unashamed in the purifying waters, men on one side, women on the other, after leaving an offering for the deity of the spring. They turned their backs on the crowd, unconcerned under the spouts, each of which is supposed to have a special purifying or curative quality. Eventually the local prince arrived with his wives and with an impressive retinue of servants. Also the barongs of the district came prancing down the bills to offer their respects and snap their jaws while a pemangku offered their prayers, manifesting their temperaments by making the men under the fleece fall in a trance and throw epileptic fits. The following day was the feast of Sakenan, the temple of the little island of Serangan, just off the Badung coast. Since tb6 night before, the island was jammed with pilgrims and orchestras,' and the next morning the short stretch of sea between Serangan and the mainland was filled with fantastic boats shaped like fish with their triangular sails up, overloaded with richly dressed people. On arrival they waded to the temple, the women balancing offerings on their heads while lifting their brocade skirts out of reach of the water.

One boat brought the holy barong landong, four giant puppets who performed in the temple. They were Djeroluh, a ribald old woman with a protuberant forehead, enormously distended ear-lobes, and deep wrinkles outlined in gold all over her white mask; a lecherous black monster with prominent teeth called Djerogede'; a young prince, Manri, and his beautiful princess, Tjili Towong Kuning, richly dressed in green and gold, who wore great flower bead-dresses over their yellow masks. Normal-size attendants held gold umbrellas of state over the giants as they waddled towards the temple in ceremonial procession with music and a retinue of men bearing spears tipped with red fur. After dedicating an offering, the giants danced to the accompaniment of gongs, flutes, and drums; the old rascal Djerogede" talked and laughed in a deep thunderous voice, while Djeroluh leaped, hooped, and yelled in a shrill falsetto, all behaving in a manner quite undignified for their holy character. Their remarks were of the sort that made my polite Balinese friends blush, especially in the episodes when the prince made love to the princess. The performance over, the men that animated the giant puppets came out from under their skirts, leaving the lifeless forms to rest in a corner of the temple.

The crowds returned home in the late afternoon, this time on foot, because the tide bad gone out, leaving solid ground where before only the white boats could pass. There was a long line of happy people in the orange light of the sunset, walking on the mud among thousands of strange vermilion crabs that peered out of their holes, constantly waving a mysterious single purple claw.

When a Balinese speaks of his gods, collectively called dewas, he does not mean the great divinities of Hinduism, but refers to an endless variety of protective spirits - sanghyang, pitara, kawitan, all of whom are in some way connected with the idea of ancestry. The rather vague term dewa includes not only the immediate ancestors worshipped in the family temple, or the nameless forefathers, founders of his community, to whom the village temples are dedicated, but also certain Hindu characters of his liking whom be has adopted into the Balinese race and has come to regard also as his ancestors. Rama, for instance the hero of the Ramayana, is Wisnu reincarnated into a brave prince who came to earth to save the world. In a later crisis the god once more took human form and came to Bali to put things in order (as gadja Mada, according to Friedericb) . becoming the ancestor of the present Balinese. From the cult of deified dead kings the nobility has accepted the idea of their divine ancestry so naturally as to assure one in all earnest from which god they trace their descent. This notion has extended to the people and I have heard even the Bali Aga Elders of Kintamani invoke Batara. Rama as "grandfather" (kaki) .

The ancestors, being closest to the people, have remained the first gods, and their cult formed the link between this and the spirit world. The introduction of great ceremonies for cremation of the dead was easily correlated to this idea because the purpose of it was to consecrate the soul of a deceased family head in order to release and convey the soul to the heaven where it will dwell as a family god, a dewa yang (see Note 6, page 3 16), when it receives a place in the family shrine. The deities of the Hindu pantheon are mostly those shipped in India, the high " Lords " batara but in Bali they acquire a decidedly Balinese personality. Centuries of religious penetration did not convince the Balinese that the bataras were, their gods; they were too aloof, too aristocratic, to be concerned with human insignificance, and the people continue to appeal to their infinitely more accessible local dewas to give the ' in happiness and prosperity.

The bataras remained remote in the popular mind, regarded rather as deified foreign lords like their princes, and as far as the Balinese are concerned, their functions ended when they created the world with all that it contains. The bataras appear in Balinese literature with such human characteristics and are so susceptible to the passions of ordinary mortals that they become merely mythological figures losing their esoteric significance. Typical is the amusing episode in the Tjatur Yoga in which Batara Guru', the Supreme Teacher, quarrelled with Batara Brahma for the privilege of making men:

" After Siwa had created the insects, Wisnu the trees, Isora the fruits, and Sambu the flowers, Batara Guru discussed with Brahma the creation of human beings to populate the new world. Brahma admitted he did not know how and asked Batara Guru' to try first. The latter then made four figures, four men out of red earth, and went into meditation so that they could talk, think, walk, and work. Brahma remarked that if those were human beings, then be could make men, and taking some clay, he proceeded to make a figure that resembled a man. Batara Guru" was annoyed and made the rain, which lasted for three days, destroying the figure Brahma bad made. When the rain stopped, Brahma tried again, this time baking the figure. On seeing the man of baked clay, Batara guru` boasted be would eat excrement if Brahma could give it life, but Brahma succeeded in making it alive by meditation and demanded that Batara Guru' make good his boast. Enraged, Batara Guru' took some clay and made images of dogs that became living dogs, and wished that forever after they should walk, whine, bark, and eat excrement."

However, to the learned Brahmanic priests Siwa represents, the abstract idea of divinity that permeates everything - the, total of the forces we call God. Siwa is the source of all life,.. the synthesis of the creative and generative powers in nature;, consequently in him are the two sexes in one-. the Divine, Hermaphrodite (Windu"), symbol of completion, the ultimate perfection. As male Siwa is the mountain, the Gunung Agug) the Lingga, Pasupati, the father of all humanity, all phallic symbols. He is also the Sun, the Space, and as Batara Guru', the,' Supreme Teacher, be is the maker of the world. As female is Uma,mother of all nature, Giri Putri, goddess of the mountains, Dewi Gangga and Dewi Danul, deities of rivers and lakes., These, his feminine manifestations (sakti), are taken by the common people as his literal wives, but the learned interpretthese wives, and his connubial relations with them, as the two, eternal principles: male and female, spirit and matter, unit d,~ for the constant production and reproduction of the universe, the exaltation of the union of the sexes for procreation.

The well-known Indian'trinity, the supreme gods Brahma,, Vishnu, and Siva, are in Bali expressions of the one force called, Siwa, but there is also a trinity in Bali: Brahma Siwa (Brahma) ~ Sada Siwa (Wisnu'), and Prama Siwa (Iswara). In the mind. of the common people even this trinity becomes, with typical", Balinese miscomprebension, a deity in itself called Sanghyang trimurti or Sanggah Tiga Sakti, "the -Sbrine of the Three Forces." Thus Siwa "is fire (Brahma) wbotbrougbsmoke (vapour) becomes water (Wisnu')," which in turn fertilizes the earth (Pertiwi) to produce rice (Sri). Ideas such as this, juggled cleverly by the high priests, repeat themselves in endless sequence to form the intricate Brahmanic philosophy. All the gods that overcrowd the Balinese pantheon are thus manifestations of Siwa ' but they are not always on the side of righteousness, because the good creative and reproductive forces can be polluted and turn into evil and acquire a destroying, angry form. Thus the reversed form of Siwa is Kala, Lord of Darkness, born out of Siwa to destroy the world, just as Siwa's wife Uma became Durga, goddess of death, completing the cycle from life to death. In the Balinese manuscript Usana Diawa we find the story of the birth of Batara Kala:

Siwa had created creatures with no ethics and without a code of morals, who went naked, lived in caves, and had no religion. They mated under the trees, left their children uncared for, and ate whatever they found, living like beasts. This made Siwa so angry that he decided to create a son to destroy the unworthy human beings and told his wife Uma of his intentions while mating with her. She withdrew indignant and in the struggle Siwa's sperm fell on the ground. He then called the gods together and told them, pointing to the sperm, that should it develop life the result would bring them into great difficulties. The alarmed gods began to shoot arrows at it; the sperm grew a pair of shoulders when the first arrow struck it, hands and feet sprang out after the second, and as they continued to shoot arrows into it, the drop of sperm grew into a fearful giant who stood as high as 'a mountain, demanding food with which to calm his insatiable hunger. Siwa called him Kala and sent him down to earth, where every day he could eat his fill of people, and the human race -rapidly dwindled away. Wisnu, alarmed, called upon Indra for help to save mankind, and it was decided to civilize them by sending several of the gods to teach them the law of life, agriculture, and the arts and to provide them with the necessarytools.

 

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