RITES AND FESTIVALS

RELIGIONS WERE BORN OF MAN'S DESIRE to understand and control the mysterious process of nature. Fear of the eerie, unseen forces that cause birth, reproduction, and death, awe before the power of fire, wind, and water, made him worship the elements of the teeming world in which he lived. Only by the existence of psychic forces and powerful spirits could he explain the perpetual motion of the sun and the moon, the roll of the sea, and the movements of the clouds, the wind that shakes the trees, lightning, thunder, and rain. Health, fertility, and success he attributed to his magic harmony with these forces, while for earthquakes, volcanic disturbances, epidemics, and the loss of crops he blamed the anger of spirits whom he had failed to propitiate.

Eager to place his fate in the hands of superior beings who would take care of his needs and on whom he could place the responsibility for his failures, man created a pantheon of supernatural beings - protective gods and adverse evil spirits - whose goodwill be aimed to gain by rites, offerings, and sacrifices. Unconsciously, by elaboration and by the adoption of new elements into the pantheon, he ended by developing an elaborate system of ritual and magic acts. Thus the primitive Balinese made of their island a magic world populated by gods, human beings, and demons. each occupying a level allotted by rank: the deified spirits of their ancestors dwelling in the summits of the volcanoes that form the island; ordinary human beings living in the middle world, the land that lies between the mountain tops and the sea, which is the home of devils and fanged giants, the enemies of mankind.

Placed between these two poles from which emanate opposing forces (the positive from the mountains and the negative from the underworld), the entire life of the calm and sensitive Balinese - their daily routine, social organization, their ethics, manners, art; in short, the total culture of the island - is moulded by a system of traditional rules subordinated to religious beliefs. By this system they regulate every act of their lives so that it shall be in harmony with the natural forces, which they divide eternally -into pairs: male and female - the creative principle; right and left; high and low - the principles of place, direction, and rank; strong and weak, or healthy and sick, clean and unclean; sacred and powerful or unholy and dangerous; in general: Good and Evil, Life and Death.

SOCIETY AND RELIGION

The conglomerate of religious principles manifests itself in elaborate cults of ancestors and deities of fertility, of fire, water, earth, and sun, of the mountains and the sea, of gods and devils. They are the backbone of the Balinese religion, which is generally referred to as Hinduism, but which is in reality too close to the earth, too animistic, to be taken as the same esoteric religion as that of the Hindus of India. Since the earliest times, when Bali was under the rule of the great empires that flourished in the golden era of Hinduistic Java, the various forms of Javanese religion became in turn the religions of Bali, from the Mahayanic Buddhism of the Sailendras in the seventh century' the orthodox Sivaism of the ninth, to the demoniac practices of the Tantric sects of the eleventh century. In later times Bali adopted the modified, highly Javanized religion of Madjapahit, when Hinduism had become strongly tinged with native Indonesian ideas. Each of these epochs left a deep mark in Balinese ritual; to the native Balinese cults of ancestors, of the elements,
and of evil spirits, were added the sacrifices of blood and the practices of black magic of the Tantric Buddhists, the Vishnuite cult of the underworld, Brahmanic juggling of mystic words and
cabalistic syllables, the cremation of the dead, and so forth, all, however, absorbed and transformed to the point of losing their identity, to suit the temper of the Balinese.

It is true that Hindu gods and practices are constantly in evidence, but their aspect and significance differ in Bali to such an extent from orthodox Hinduism that we find the primitive beliefs of a people who never lost contact with the soil rising supreme over the religious philosophy and practices of their masters. Like the Catholicism of some American Indians, Hinduism was simply an addition to the native religion, more as a decoy to keep the masters content, a strong but superficial veneer of decorative Hinduistic practices over the deeply rooted animism of the Balinese natives.

Religion is to the Balinese both race and nationality; a Balinese loses automatically the right to be called a Balinese if be changes his faith or if a Balinese woman marries a Moha'mmedan, a Chinese, or a Christian, because she takes leave forever of her own family gods when she moves into her husband's home and instead worships his gods from that time on. The religious sages, the Brahmanic priests, remain outsiders, aloof from the ordinary Balinese, who have their own priests, simple people whose office is to guard and sweep the community temples, in which there are no idols, no images of gods to be worshipped. These temples are frequented by the ancestral gods, who are supposed to occupy temporarily the little empty shrines dedicated to them, when visiting their descendants. The Balinese live with their forefathers in a great family of the dead and the living, and it would be absurd for them to try to make converts of another nationality, since the ancestors of the converts would still remain of another race apart.

Rather than a sectarian Church system, separate from the daily life and in the hands of a hierarchy of priests to control and exploit the people, the religion of Bali is a set of rules of behaviour, a mode of life. The resourceful Balinese fitted their religious system into their social life and made it the law (adat) by which the supernatural forces are brought under control by the harmonious co-operation of everyone in the community to strengthen the magic health of the village. Like a human being, the community possesses a life power that wears away and must be fed by the regular performances of magic acts of the " right," the side of righteousness. The life power is seriously impaired by the magic evil, that of the " left," or by the polluting effects of sickness and death. Bestiality, incest, suicide, and temple vandalism are among the acts of individuals that would make the entire village sebel, or magically weak. The spiritual health is also undermined by the gradual predominance of evil forces, the demons and witches that haunt the village. Some of these are easily disposed of, but the main concern of the Balinese centres in the propitiation of the protecting ancestors who descend to this earth on special holidays and at the anniversaries of the innumerable temples, when they receive offerings and entertainment from the people. By these ceremonies and temple festivals the populace hopes to entice the spirits to remain among them; the beauty of the offerings, the pleasant music, the elaborate theatrical performances, aim to keep them from growing bored and leaving.

Motivated by this background of religious beliefs, the Balinese found it necessary to establish a system of communal cooperation to provide for the magnificent festivals that are such an important part of their life. The spirit of co-operation soon extended to their personal and economic life and developed into a primitive agrarian commune in which every village was a socially and politically independent little republic, with every citizen enjoying equal rights and obligations. These villages

were ruled by councils of village members and officials who governed as representatives of the ancestral spirits. Since the land, source of all wealth, also belonged to the ancestors, individual ownership of land was not recognized, and it is remark. able, but typical, that the village officials still govern as a duty to the community and without remuneration.

Furthermore, the Balinese have been extremely liberal inmatters of religion. Every time a new idea was introduced into the island, instead of repudiating it,'they took it for what it was worth and, if they found it interesting enough, assimiiated it into their religion, since no one knew what power there might be in the new gods. In this manner, from all the sects and cults that at one time or another reached the island, they selected anew the principles that best suited their own ideas and accumulated a vast store of religiou's power. Buddha became to them the younger brother of Siva, and if the efforts of the Christian missionaries who are attempting to convert the Balinese succeed, it is not unlikely that in the future " Sanghyang Widi," theexalted name that the missionaries have adopted for Jesus, will become a first cousin of Siva and Buddha and will enjoy offerings and a shrine where he can rest when he chooses to visit Bali

Temple and Temple Feast

The temple is certainly the most important institution on the island and the clearest illustration of the spirit of the Balinese religion. There are temples everywhere, from the modest family shrines in every household, to the extravagant temples of the princes and great town temples; large or small, plain or richly carved temples found in the ricefields, in the cemeteries, in the markets, on the beaches, in caves, among the tangle of gnarled roots of old waringins, on deserted hill tops and even on the barren rocks along the coastline.

When we discovered that the Balinese did not seem to, mind in the least our going in and out of the temples, we started visiting them systematically, looking for unusual statues or reliefs, and although from the beginning we received the impression that there were not two temples exactly alike, we became aware that there were features common to all; unlike the forbidding, sombre temples of other,Oriental countries, the Balinese temple is a gay, open-air affair; one, two, or three open courtyards surrounded by a low wall, each court leading into the next through more or less elaborate stone gates, and with a number of empty sheds, pavilions, and shrines in varied styles, the majority covered with thatch, some with only one roof, others with as many as eleven superimposed roofs like pagodas.

There were no soot-blackened rooms filled with incense smoke for mysterious rites performed in front of great idols; as a matter of fact, there were no idols at all worshipped in any of the hundreds of Balinese temples we visited. In many there were ancient statues from former times, together with many shapeless stones kept as amulets by the community, which, because of their antiquity or because they were found in extraordinary circumstances, came to be regarded as gifts of the gods, or as their name (peturun) indicates, as heirlooms from their ancestors. The gods are invisible and impalpable and in all Bali there is not an image of a Hindu deity worshipped for the sake of its representation. Most often not even the priests in charge were aware of the names of the divinities represented.

Our interest in temples grew when we tried to understand the rules that dictated their intriguing design, but the first attempts left us only more confused than before. Explanations by the pemangkus, the temple-keepers, did not agree and the discrepancies were often greater than the points of agreement. With Spies I started into a more systematic search; we went into a temple, sought the pemangku, and drew a plan in which the names and purposes of each unit were indicated. Repetitions started to appear in many Plans, and when we had gathered many ground plans of various sorts of temples we traced the

common features in them. From those that appeared most frequently I set myself to the task of reconstructing one " ideal Balinese temple.
Most typical was the temple with two courtyards, the outer
court called djaban, " outside," and the other the dalam, the " inside." Entrance into the first court was gained through the tjandi bentar, the " split monument " or split gate (A. See plan), which was like the two halves of a solid tower cut clean through the middle. each half p shed apart to give access into the temple.

In the right-hand corner of the first courtyard, or outside the gate, is the high tower where bang the village drums (kulkul) . Inside the outer court are a number of simple sheds: a kitchen (paon) where the food for feasts is cooked, the bale gong, a shed for the orchestra, and another bale" used as rest-house by the people and for the making of offerings. The outer courtyard is generally devoid of ornamentation except for a number of decorative frangipani trees.

Another monumental gate, the padu raksa, leads into the second court, the temple proper. This gate is a massive structure identical in shape and design with the reunited halves of the tjandi bentar, but raised high above the ground on stone platforms, with a narrow entrance provided with wooden doors and reached by a flight of stone steps. On each side of the stairs is a statue of a fierce giant, two raksasas to guard the entrance. Directly behind the door is a stone wall (aling aling) covered with reliefs of demons. These are meant to keep evil influences from entering the temple.

All sorts of theories have been advanced as to the significance of these two gates, the most characteristic structures in the temples. It has been said that the tjandi bentar represents the two halves of the mountain Mahameru, which was split by Pasupati (Siva) in order to place each half in Bali, one as the Gunung Agung and the other as the Batur. A scholarly Balinese told me that it represents the two halves of a complete thing, the male at the right, the female at the left; or it is perhaps symbolical of the splitting of the material world to permit the entrance into the mystery with the physical body. Dr. Goris suggests as the origin of these gates the remainders of the old tjandis, the burial towers of the former kings, a logical explana-
tion because of the cult of deified kings linked to the ancestor worship and, further, because of the identical shape of the Balinese temple gates and the old tjandis, a shape of temple gates which dates back to the most ancient of Javanese temples. The tjandi form appears throughout Balinese ritual as the symbol for the universe: a pyramid of receding platforms - the foundation of the earth and the mountains - the intermediate space
between heaven and earth, and the stratified -heavens, represented by the pagoda-like roofs (tumpang) , or by gradually decreasing stone mouldings.

The first courtyard is only an antechamber for the preparation of feasts and for other social purposes. It is in the inner court that are erected the altars and shrines that serve as rest-houses for the gods during their visits to this earth. The principle of orientation - the relation of the mountains to the sea, high and low, right and left - that constitutes the ever present Balinese Rose of the Winds (nawa sanggah), rules the orientation and distribution of the temple units. The principal altars and shrines are arranged in two rows on the honoured sides of the court: kadja, upward to the mountain, and kangin, to the right of this direction.

First in importance is the gedong pesimpangan, built in the middle of the kangin side, a masonry building closed by wooden doors dedicated to the focal deity, the. ancestor-founde'r of the community, often named after the village, as, for instance, in desa Dedap he is called Ratu' Dalam Dedapan. Inside there is often a stone phallus (1ingga) and, since the building can be locked, there the relics and heirlooms of the temple are also kept: ancient statues of stone wood or gold old bronze and so forth.
Most impressive are the merus, high pagodas of wood restin on stone platforms, always with an odd number of superimposed receding roofs (from three to eleven) made of thick layers idjuk, the everlasting and costly fibre of the sugar palm. These roofs are arranged along an open shaft through which the god are supposed to descend into the meru. The temple of Besakih the greatest in all Bali, on the slopes of the Gunung Agung consists practically of merus, and other important temples ha three, five, seven, or nine merus, but our typical temple has on built in the principal place, the centre of the kadja side of th courtyard. The meru is supposed to represent the great cosmic mountain Mahameru and is the seat of. the high Hindu god A curious feature of merus is the miniature iron implement" buried under the building, together with little gold and silver
roast chickens, lotus flowers, crabs, shrimps, and so forth. Again where the rafters of the uppermost roof meet, there is a vertical beam of sandalwood with a bole in which is deposited a smal covered Chinese bowl of porcelain containing nine pre
plates of various metals inscribed wistones or nine pripih magic words.

Never missing are two shrines for the great mountains: on for the Gunung Agung and other for the Batur or for the Batukau in the villages in its neighbourhood). They resemble little merus of one roof, also made of idjuk and endi in tall phallic points. Of great importance is the padmasa , the stone throne for the sun-god Surya, which stands
In variably in the uppermost right its back directed always towards the Gunung Agung. The form of the padmasana is again the representation of the cosmos. a wide platform shaped like the mythical turtle bedawang, wit two stone.serpents coiled around its body, rest three recedin platforms, the mountains, the whole surmounted by a stone chair with a high back.
other shrines that are never missing are the little houses for ngrurah Alit and Ngrurah gede" , the secretaries " of the gods, who watch that the proper offerings are made, and.the stone niche for the Taksu, the interpreter of the deities. It is the Taksu' who enters the bodies of mediums when in a trance and speaks through them to make known the decisions of the gods to the people. There is still one more shrine, the Maspait (dedicated to the totemic gods of the settlers from Madjapahit, the " original deer " (medjangan seluang). This canbe recognized by a small sculpture of a deer's bead or by the stylization of antlers carved in wood. There are, besides, other pavilions; one in the middle of the temple which serves as a communal seat for the gods, the pepelik, or paruman, and the bale piasan, simple sheds for offerings.

This lengthy description is still far from complete and is limited to the main features of a would-be average temple, but unfortunately such typical temples could hardly be found in Bali. Despite the rules, practically every temple has curious contradictory individual features; besides, such is the variety of types of temples and so great the local differences, that only for the purpose of a general understanding of the spirit of Balinese temples can this " typical " temple be of use. To note down all the variants of Balinese temples would require a great volume.

Besides the family shrines, every Balinese " complete " community, a desa, should have at least the three reglementary temples: first a " naval " temple, pura puseh, the old First in importance is the gedong pesimpangan, built in the middle of the kangin side, a masonry building closed by wooden doors dedicated to the focal deity, the. ancestor-founde'r of the community, often named after the village, as, for instance, in desa Dedap he is called Ratu' Dalam Dedapan. Inside there is often a stone phallus (1ingga) and, since the building can be locked, there the relics and heirlooms of the temple are temple of the original community from which the village sprang; a second, pura desa, the town temple for official celebrations of the entire village, which, in case it has a bale agung, the old-fashioned assembly ball of the village Elders, receives the name of pura ba1e agung; and third, a pura dalam, the temple of the dead, built out in the cemetery, dedicated to the deities of death and cremation. It often happens that the pura puseh, despite its being the most important centre of worship, is located in another village or even in another district, because it was from there that came the settlers of the later village. In some places the pura pus6h and the pura desa are combined into one, with only a wall separating the two departments. There are still the private temples of the, princes; the royal temples (pura panataran) , and the pura dadia the private temple of origin of the family, the connecting link between & scattered branches of a common stock. Other important temples are the pura bedugul, the rice temple of each agricultural guild; the pura pamaksan, little temples of each village ward (bandiar), from which the pura puseh evolves; hill temples (pura bukit) , sea temples on the beaches (pura segara) , temples for the deities of seed and markets (pura melanting), bathing-temples, temples in lakes., caves, springs, trees, and so forth.

Except for the old pemangku, the keeper and officiating priest of the temple, who can be seen there occasionally sweeping the yard, the temples are ordinarily deserted because the Balinese go into them only for public gatherings, festivals, and meetings. Pemangkus are simple people of the common class with oldfashioned manners, polite, good-natured, and with a charming modesty, who live near the temple and perform all of its duties, from sweeping it to invoking and impersonating the deities. The haughty Brahmanic priests, the pedandas, refer to them contemptuously as diero sapuh, " sweepers," but the pemangkus are the really active priests of the people's ritual and alone officiate at temple feasts, when the pedandas do not take an active part. Furthermore there are villages where the pedandas are even barred from the temple.

The office of the pemangku is often hereditary, but be may also be chosen by some mystic while inspired by the spirits. He dresses in all-white clothes with a characteristic coat with tight sleeves and wears his head-cloth in the old-style high crest. Pemangkus lead a normal routine life without great religious restrictions, attending to their personal affairs until the date for the feast of the temple approaches, when they will become the
centre of all activity.

Every temple celebrates its birthday (odalan) on the anniversary of its consecration, with a great feast that constitutes the principal social event for the entire community and in which everybody in the village takes part with equal enthusiasm.

For days before the temple feast of Kengetan, as typical as any, the men attended to the decorations of the temple, building the temporary bamboo altars, erecting awnings for entertainers, adorning the shrines with flags, pennants, and penyors, cooking the food for the feast, and dressing up the statues of the demons that guard the entrance with a skirt of chequered black and white cloth and a great red hibiscus bekind each ear. At the same time the women prepared the offerings and made lamaks. The pemangku was on duty from early morning to receive and bless the offerings that each woman brought. By afternoon a great crowd of people in festival dress had gathered and the dagangs had set up their food-stands. All day long the women arrived with offerings on their heads, walking like sailing ships, requiring the help of two other women to support the fifty pounds of fruit and flowers so that the bearer could come out from under the heavy load to deposit it on the special shed erected for the purpose.

The pemangku sat in front of the central god-house praying and ringing a bell, surrounded by the new arrivals, who sat in rows behind him after leaving their offerings, the men crosslegged, with bared beads, behind the kneeling women. They prayed (mabakti) three times, taking a flower between the middle fingers of their joined bands, bringing it to their foreheads, and flinging it-in the direction of the shrine. The women sang wangesari songs in chorus while the pemangku and his assistant went around the praying people pouring holy water with long-handled ladles into their outstretched bands, drinking it with reverence, and wiping their wet hands in their hair. Serious babies in silks and gold necklaces also kneeled, repeating every gesture of their elders. Outside the temple the crowd gathered, listening to the stately music of the gong or watching a show. Sometimes the men staged cockfights (also a part of the ritual) or flirted with the vendors.

In a quiet corner an old pemangku proceeded to imbue with the spirits of the local deities the temple artjas, a pair of beautifully carved little statues, male and female, of painted and gilt sandalwood. They were usually locked into the central shrine,, wrapped in many cloths and kept in a special basket, but they were taken out on the day of their feast and made " alive." While an old man chanted the ancient song Sinom Surakarta, the old Pemangku recited a special prayer of invitation to lure the deities to occupy the artjas so that in this more tangible form they would preside over the feast in their honour, be taken out in procession, and in general serve as a point of sight towards which the ceremony was directed.
The gamelan angklung played outside the temple while the people began to form for the great procession to take the gods for a symbolical bath (melis or makies) to the nearest big river. The march started, beaded by many bearers of flags, pennants, and spears, followed by a long line of girls, their torsos wrapped." in silk scarfs of vellow, green, and magenta, marching in single,' file with the offerings and pots of holy water on their heads. Then came the little statuettes of the gods, decorated for the occasion with' fresh flowers, carried on cushions on the beads of a group of picked girls and shaded by three-staged umbrellas of state. Older women followed, also carrying offerings, and the procession was closed by the group of men and the orchestra, which played an obstinate marching rhythm on the gongs. The correct thing would have been to take the gods to the seashore, but Kengetan was far inland and there it was customary to go to the river for melis. In Den Pasar, on the occasion of the great feast of the temple Taman Badung, from a height I saw a great procession over a mile long, a fact verified by the mileage posts

on the road, a fantastic spectacle in the late afternoon sun, preceded by hundreds of fluttering flags and tall pennants, white umbrellas, and spears, moving slowly towards the sea to the accompaniment of gongs. On arrival at the beach in Kuta, after a walk of five miles, the artjas received offerings, the priests prayed towards them, and the people sang songs of praise and danced mendet to entertain the gods, returning at dusk to continue the feast through the night.

In Kengetan it was already dark when the procession returned to the temple, its arrival greeted with exploding firecrackers and clattering kulkuls, while the orchestras played furiously all at the same time. The parade stopped at the temple gate in front of the pemangku, who waited, seated in front of a mat spread with offerings. He proceeded to welcome the artjas, once more addressing a prayer to them, ringing his bell, and offering rice, money, eggs, and wine, decapitating a little chicken to spill the blood on the ground. In that instant an old woman attendant stiffened and-became possessed, followed by the pemangku, who also, fell into a trance. They both danced like somnambulists, the woman with closed eyes, the pemangku staring wildly and holding an incense brazier in his bands, in this manner leading the carriers of the artjas into the temple.
Inside, they stood in the middle of the lamplit court, and the gamelan played a dance theme; elderly women began to dance a solemn mendet (or gabor), one holding a bottle with a carved spout, another with a piece of banana leaf folded like a spoon containing arak (rice brandy), a third performing intricate steps balancing miraculously on her bead a brazier filled with glowing coals. They danced back and forth from one end of the court to the artjas, each time pouring holy water and arak on the ground in front of 'the deities. At intervals a group of young girls walked forthwith silver platters containing offerings and deposited little trays of palm-leaf with food and flowers (tjanan) , samples from the large offerings, on the floor, while the pemangku fanned their essence in the direction of the gods.

In Kengetan the gong played all night the stately, ancient music, and as dawn approached the old pemangku moved around quietly supervising things, putting out the lights and preparing for the final ceremony, the adoration of the rising sun, when mendet was danced again by middle-aged women and offerings were dedicated in the direction of the first rays of sun that appeared on the horizon. This ended the feast, and by morning, when the essence of the offerings had been consumed by the gods, the women came to collect their respective offerings and take them home.

Such is the general pattern along which a temple feast moves, but, again, each community has its own way of doing things and. no two feasts are carried out in exactly the same manner. Differences are particularly striking in the villages of the mountains, as in Paksabali and Bugbug, two communities in East Bali,

where they stage wild battles of the gods, the artjas, which are placed inside baskets wrapped in polen cloth and topped with bunches of leaves. The baskets are firmly attached to bamboo
stretchers carried by half-naked men who rush at full speed against others carrying " rival " deities, trying to knock each other down. A crowd armed with spears joins in the free-for-all while firecrackers explode, and everybody yells, pushes, and tramples everyone else. The excitement is followed by an equally mad kris dance.

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.

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.

SIWA

An average Balinese knows, however vaguely, the names of countless bataras. He is well aware, for instance, that Batara" Brahma is the god of fire, that Surya is the Sun, Indra the Lor of Heaven, and Yama that of Hell, Durga the goddess of deathi, Semara the god of physical love, and so forth ; but unless he has had. a certain amount of theological edu-,, cation, to him the Batara Siwa is simply another of the remote high gods, although the highest in rank; a sort of Radja among the bataras.

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.

THE HIGH PRIESTS AND THE BRAHMANIC RITUAL

The ultimate stage of perfection in the evolution of man on this earth, from the Balinese point of view, is to reach the Brahmana caste and to be ordained as a pedanda, a high priest: from simple
2 'Me word pedanda comes, according to Friedericb, from danda, " a staff " staff-bearer," the law. The Balinese call high priests also pendita or penita, the Learned." human being, to warrior, statesman ' scholar, priest, and after death a god. Simply having reached this position, the highest
during life in the long and arduous scale of evolution, endows pedandas with a magic character and justifies - in their own eyes at least - their superiority over all living men.

Thus the high priests are, to the Balinese, extraordinary beings , who, by their caste, knowledge, systematic preparation, and(old age, are immune in handling the dangerous secret formulas the higher ritual. An ordinary person, unprepared and not possessing the capacity to store the necessary surcharge of magic energy, would be destroyed, blown out like a weak fuse undere,a high charge of electricity, should be attempt to use this magic to control the unseen forces. With the proper training hoever, people of all castes may become priests; a common in,, can study to become a witch-doctor, for pemangku or for sunguhu, and a mystic prince with a vocation may become a re but only a Brahmana can be an authentic pedanda. Although the low-caste priests control the ordinary temple and Communityritual, have direct dealings with the ancestors, and are able intimidate demons with formulas of their own, they are stricted to officiating for people within or below their caste., while the Brahmanic priests serve all those who can afford their fees.
The pedandas still exert a powerful influence on Balinese life despite the fact that their relations with the people were never intimate; they represent the law, and the judges of the high
native courts (raadkerta) are still pedandas in the majority They purify persons or dwellings, bless people after illness or accident, and can avert curses or spells. On account Of the knowledge of the calendar they must be consulted everyting), is necessary to determine the exact lucky or unlucky date on which to begin or to which to postpone a significant undertakin Mountain people ignore them entirely, but they are essential to all ceremonies of the nobility, and even the poorest commoner will make great sacrifices to be able to call a pedanda to Officiate at his private affairs, particularly at cremations, to assure his dead ones of the correct send-off into the nether world. To use the services, of a pedanda is a luxury that brings social precstige.

A pedanda's life is strictly regimented and full of prohibitions. We visited occasionally the good-natured, sociable pedanda, of Sidan, who often remarked with a deep sigh of regret that the life of a priest was a difficult one because be bad always to think of the gods. At lunch in his house, hen he had a goose cut " in our honour, be condescended to eat with us, but had to sit at a higher evel, " otherwise the gods would not like it.' With a grand disdainful gesture he threw a few grains of rice at the hungry dogs that surrounded us, explaining that he had to share his food with these evil spirits in disguise; then, he proceeded to enumerate the many taboos be bad to observe when eating: be could not sit at a public eating-place or eat in the market; he ate facing east and not until be bad made his morning prayers. Beef, pork, and food from offerings were forbidden to him and be could not touch alcohol. Under no circumstances could he walk under dirty water. He was fat and old and he loved to ride in motor-cars, but since so many drain-pipes have been built. ecently at high points over the roads to connect the ricefields, he encountered great difficulties when travelling by motor-car. Every time be came to a pipe the car stopped. He stepped out and climbed to the top with great effort, to come down panting on the other side.

A pedanda marries, generally only once, a woman of his own caste, who becomes automatically a priestess (pedanda istri), who must help her husband in the ritual and who may herself officiate on certain occasions. High priests do not observe sexual abstinence, although it is recommended in the scriptures. Ancestry is one of their great concerns, and the standing of the various Brahmanic families is determined by their 'purity of lineage. Balinese Brahmanas all claim descent from the mythical Wau Rauh, the highest priest of Madjapahit, who in coming to Bali took wives from the various castes. His descendants established themselves at various places in Bali and founded the
Brahmanic clans we find today, from the purer Kamenuh, tothe Keniten, Gelgel, Nuaba, Mas, Kayusunia, Andapan, and so forth.

Pedandas should dedicate their entire life to meditation, the study of theology, and the practice of the ritual. During life they are supposed to be models of knowledge, purity of thought and of actions, but unfortunately this is not always the case and, as everywhere else, there are priests who,take advantage of their position and by their mysterious hocus-pocus exploit the people. In Bali, however, this occurs on a considerably smaller scale than in countries dominated by an organized clergy. The Brahmanas jealously keep the inner knowledge,of the official religion for themselves and the common people believe in them, but continue to regard them, like their princes, as, foreigners aloof from the true life of Bali.

The Brahmanic priesthood is today divided into two great groups: the Siwaites (siwa or siwa sidanta), and the so-called Buddhists (bodda); not true followers of Siwa and of the Buddha, but simply sectarian divisions of the same religion (see page 318). The pedanda siwa wears his hair long, tied in a knot on the top of his bead, while the pedanda bodda has his cut shoulder-length; otherwise their office and ritual are the same with only small differences in detail, in phraseology, and in the texts used by each. To the average Balinese this division means so little that he will call a priest of either sect to officiate for him regardless of whether he is siwa or bodda, simply because of personal preference or family tradition or because the priest s house may be nearer. To him two 'priests of two sects are undoubtedly more effective than one but this is an expensive luxury that only the princes can afford. The present Regent of gianyar always engaged both a pedanda siwa and a pedanda bodda, who . sat side by side. He, went even further and bad also a Satria priest, a resi, and a sunguhu to take care of the evil spirits, so that every sort of priest was represented. In.

The religious service of the pedandas, the maweda, consists i the recitation of the mantras, the magic formulas, accompanied by ritual actions and significant gestures of the hands and fingers (mudra) to give a physical emphasis to the spoken wor Through concentration culminating in a trance, the priest be! comes the deity itself, entering the body of the priest and ac ing through it to consecrate the water and emanate divine vibra- tions.

A performance of maweda by an able priest is one of the mo beautiful sights in Bali. Such finished training, such showmanship, enters into its execution, and the hand gestures of the priest are so thoroughly imbued with rhythm and beauty, that the maweda is more than a simple prayer; it is a whole spectacle a pantomimic dance of the hands. I have once seen a revealing film of a Nepalese Buddhist priest dancing with his entire body.' while be recited Sanskrit mantras and performed the symbolical hand gestures, and I have wondered if this was not the origin' of the great art of Balinese dancing. Volumes have been written, on the band expression of the Hindus; The Mirror of Gesture Comaraswami is already a classic; the beautiful bands of India Tibetan, Chinese, and Indonesian Buddhist statues and fresco are well known, and in Java we find the statues of the B d of Borobudur in the positions of the mudras. De Kat A eli, in his Mudras gives us the most thorough study up to date the Balinese maweda, painstakingly illustrated by Tyra de Kleen Only a moving picture, however, could give an idea of its eerie beauty.

The most important activity in the everyday life of t pedandas is the performance of a domestic maweda, done every morning and on an empty stomach. Every fifth day (klion) a on days of full and new moons, the maweda is essential a more complete, with the full regalia of important occasion, The priest has first to purify himself thoroughly by reciting cleansing mantras for each action of his morning toilet. He washes his hair, rinses his mouth., polishes his teeth, and rinses
his mouth again; washes his face, bathes, rubs his hair with oil, combs it, and then dresses. For each move he has to recite a short mantra, one for each garment he wears.

Meantime on a high platform his wife has arranged his paraphernalia (upakara) : trays with flowers (night-blooming flowers if the ceremony is to take place at night), gold- or silver vessels containing grains of rice and sandalwood powder, his holy-water container (siwamba) with a silver sprinkler (sesirat) and a longhandled ladle, (tjanting), his prayer bell (gantha), an incenseburner (pasepan) , and a bronze oil lamp ( pedamaran) . Put away in baskets at one side of where the priest will sit are the attributes of Siwa be will wear during the ceremony: the bawa, a bell-sbaped mitre of red felt with applications of beaten gold and topped by a crystal ball, the " shimmer of the sun" (suryakanta) , and a number of strings of genitri seeds (ear-rings, bracelets, neck and breast beads) ornamented with pieces of gold set with linggas of crystal, phallic symbols."

Once seated cross-legged among the upakara, the priest proceeds to purify his person; be lays a prayer cloth over his lap and with his hands on his knees he mumbles a formula and asks of Batara Siwa to descend into the water-vessel and into his body. He stretches his bands over the incense smoke, uncovers the tray in front of him, and mumbles the mantra asta mantra, the hand-cleansing formula, rubs the palms of his bands with a flower and sandalwood powder, " wiping out impurity," and recites a formula for each finger as it is passed over the palm of each hand, taking flowers which be holds over the incense smoke and then flinging them away saying: Be happy, be perfect, glad in your heart."

To induce trance, the priest uses pranayama, breath con closing each nostril alternately with a finger, breathing d and holding his breath as long as possible, then exhaling through the other nostril. With a blade of grass he inscribes the sac, ong in the holy water, prays again with a flower which he drops into the water-container, then takes his bell in the left band a strikes the clapper three times with another flower held in his right hand. Now his breath, his voice. and his spirit idep
in unison with the deity.

the priest proceeds, mumbling his guttural prayers, ringing the bell alternately with swift. intricate -gestures of hands, and fingers, taking flowers at intervals, dropping them into t holy water or holding them over the lamp and the incense, arflinging them away. He rings the bell louder and quicker stops suddenly.

During these preliminaries he gives signs of the oncoming trance; he gasps, his eyes roll back, and his movements take a tense, unearthly air. Now the deity is within him and sprinkles holy water and flings flowers, not away, but towards himself. He touches his forehead, throat, and shoulders with sandalwood powder and puts on the attributes of Siwa: he ti a long blade of alang alang grass around his head; wears the beads over his ears, across his breast, and on his wrists, and places h red and gold mitre on his head. He mumbles inwardly his in sacred prayers and, with apparent physical effort, he leads soul from his " lower body " into his head, holding a rosary genitri seeds and raising his bands slowly upwards. This brings him into the complete trance; he trembles all over and, rolling, his eyes in ecstasy, be pronounces the prayers " for the world in a deep, strangely changed voice. Thus the water in the container becomes toya pelukatan, Siwa's water.

Such is the power of concentration of the pedandas du these trances that once, at the preliminary ceremonies for the cremation of the Regent of Buleleng's daughter, a small pavilion
caught fire near where the high priest performed the maweda, almost burning, prematurely, the corpse lying in state; the priest went on with his prayer totally unmindful of the wild screams
of the women attendants and the rushing relatives, who extinguished the flames.

To become himself again, the priest sprinkles water towards him and " drives back his soul into the stomach." He takes off his ornaments and pins a little bouquet of multi-coloured flowers over his hair knot. This ends the ceremony, and he sprinkles his relatives and neighbours with the remaining holy water.

Despite the secrecy with which the priests surround the knowledge of the Sanskrit mantras, a good many of them have been studied and translated by Dutch and Javanese scholars, such as De Kat Angelino, R. Ng. Poerbatjaraka, and Dr. R. Goris, and I refer those interested in mantras to their works. Most sacred of all the aphorisms of the pedandas, and as typical as any, is the kuta mantra: "OM, HRAM HRUM SAH, PARAMA-SHI^VA-DMATA NAMAH: Om, hrain hrum sah, praise be to the all-high Shiva, the Sun"' (Goris) .

Religious knowledge is transmitted from father to son or from teacher (guru") to pupil (sisiya). The priest then becomes his pupil's absolute master and his father; even in case there be no blood relationship between them, marriage with the teacher's daughter would be considered as incest, a most dreadful crime. All Bralimanas are eligible to become pedandas with the exception of lepers, madmen, epileptics, the deformed, and those who have received dishonourable punishments. The pupil learns Kawi first, the classic language, to study the preparatory texts; is taught the moral principles by which to rule his life, which are, according to De Kat Angelino, the capital sins: crime, greed, hypocrisy, envy and ill temper, morbidness; the five commandments for the outer world: Thou shalt not kill, not steal, be chaste, not be violent, adhere to the principle of passive resistance; and those for the inner self: avoid of impure foods, or anger, remain conscious of the teachings, and be in unison with the teacher.

Later on, he studies Sanskrit (sloka) and learns the Wedas.Eventually he is initiated by his teacher in a most elaborate cere mony, which I know only by hearsay in which the teacher leads the hands to perform his first' the hands of his pupil with his own hands. The pupil makes repeated reverences (sembah) to his teacher and to the sun washes and kisses his teacher's feet

and receives his priestly credentials, a secret document containing powerful formulas written on a blade of lontar palm. I have been told that the pupil " dies " symbolically during the ceremony and is reborn as a priest, and that his body is then washed and treated exactly like a corpse.
As conclusion, we find that the amazing conglomerate of traditions, beliefs, and philosophies that together constitute the, Balinese religion, one that is as complex and tangled as can be found anywhere today, alone is the most powerful motivating,. force to the entire life of the island. Our knowledge of Bali is as young as the history of its contacts with the West, and a good deal will have to be unravelled before we can have a clear picture of that unique product of tropical Asia, the character of the Balinese, which is reflected in the fantastic interpretation of religious ideas from India, China, and Java. These were at times assimilated with a sense of practical logic, at times obvious] misunderstood; but the result was a healthy and thoroughly Balinese manner of belief. Despite Hinduistic deviations, religious symbols and ideas retained much of their original, primitive simplicity, and fanaticism and idolatry did not overshadow the ancient animist worship of nature and of the elements. Whatever the source of these ideas may be, the Balines
worship the sun, the earth, and water as, sources of life-giving fertility; fire is a purifying el ' ement. The sea receives offerings once a year in a great feast in Lebih on the Gianyar coast. Also
sources of fertility, and the dwellings of the gods, are the moun tains, which are venerated in every temple and private shrine.

The highest mountain, the Gunung Agung, is the navel, the focal point of their world. A cult in itself has developed around the planting, growing, and harvesting of rice; old banyan trees are seen with respect, and many contain a little altar among the maze of their aerial roots where passing people leave offerings. Once a year all food vegetation, and coconut trees in particular, have a feast in their honour; they are given offerings and each tree is " dressed up " with a gay skirt and a scarf. We have seen that wood for house posts must be erected in "' correct " position, the way the tree grew and not " upside down." Not everyone can cut down a tree; specialists are called because they know the formulas and the magic to be performed after a tree is felled (placing a small green bough in the stump) to prevent the tree spirit from taking revenge, making the cutter lose his hair or be reincarnated in a prematurely bald-headed person. Itwould be dangerous for a person who is sebel (spiritually unclean) to climb trees. Everywhere there are temples dedicated to the nameless spirits of the mountains, of the sea, of old caves, an cient trees, lakes, springs, and even shapeless stones and other inanimate objects.

Although invisible and elusive, the gods of the Balinese are not unlike living human beings; they can be invited to dwell on this earth, to visit the temples and homes, when they are received as honoured guests with music, banquet food, and entertainment. They are not opposed to coming in contact with ordinary mortals, and to help them they often take part themselve's in the ceremonies. But the gods are worshipped only in spirit and nowhere are their images or representations considered as holy in themselves unless it is supposed they are temporarily occupying them. By contrast, they have to tolerate and pacify evil spirits, who are as unavoidable as illness and trouble, but whom they treat with contempt. These evil forces at times pollute and disturb everything: people, temples, houses, the whole organism of the island in general, are subject to critical

moments, becoming weakened and unclean, and it is the office of their priests to cure this condition by neutralizing the evil forces, cleansing and strengthening the village or the individual, thus defiled by spiritual sickness.

Thus, Balinese religion remains a colourful animist cult in,: which are interwoven the esoteric principles and philosophy of, Hinduism,.but this condition is by no means limited to Bali Javanese Hinduism was of this sort, and even in India we find)" a parallel in the simultaneous worship of primitive demons, ancestors, and elements, belonging to the Dravidian lower classes, intermingled with the Brahmanic philosophy. To the Indian masses as with the Balinese, Siva and Vishnu may be dignified,. gods of a higher rank than the more accessible local deities, who
remain, however, closer to the common people, perhaps because, like themselves, they are of a lower caste.