Tabanan, Rainbow over Ricefields

‘’Biu Lalung’”, Offering Ingredients Made of Banana’s Parts

Apart from being used for foodstuff, plants for Hindu devotees in Bali are also used as ingredients of offerings. Bananas for instance, can be directly eaten, while its young stem is used for making delicious jukut ares soup, its blossom for jukut urab, or roroban.

Banana leaf is widely used as a food wrapper. Some people in certain regions take its hump as a foodstuff for rice substitution, especially in regions that on numerous occasions suffer droughts like Nusa Penida, Eastern Karangasem.
Banana (Musa sp.) is a clumpy vegetation with a vertical, delicate, round and yellowish green stalk. It has a single elliptic green leaf at 1.5-2 m long and 30-50 cm wide, bunched composite flowers; round elongated fruit resembling a comb. Bananas can grow well starting from the lowlands up to an altitude of 1,000 m above sea level.
As a plant for offerings, bananas are mostly used. Its fruit is used for raka and the tip of its leaf as don tunjungan. In some cases, there is an occasion where it is used for it’s whole part (stalk, fruit, blossom and leaf). Bananas of this kind are called biu lalung. It is a stem of banana that only consists of three bunches along with its blossom (flower).
Biu lalung is used at grandiose rituals, namely the middle up scale yajna (ritual sacrifice). This ritual is indicated by the use of offerings bebangkit taman gembal, either in Deva Yajna, Rishi Yajna, Manushya Yajna or Bhuta Yajna. This biu lalung is usually already set up one day prior to the ritual performed. It must be of ‘biu kayu’, not of other kinds.
This kind of banana has a small stem and is of reddish color. It bears small fruit resembling fingers, is dark green when young, and then turns yellow when ripe. And certainly, this banana is very sweet when it’s ripe. The ripe fruit is used for ingredients of banten suci, upakara sawa prateka, bebangkit, banten colongan, pula kerti and penuntun or escort.
According to Jero Mangku Ketut Arthana, biu lalung is placed at the eastern side of the Surya shrine as a symbol of direction of the sunrise namely the eastern horizon. This representation indicates that it is noon in which mankind will start their work. Later, blossoms are the symbols of the heart as the abode of the Lord Isvara that is situated in the east and has a sacred character named Sang. “As a matter of fact, biu kayu is a stem of banana that has only blossomed (in the shape of heart or pusuh in Balinese). However, it is hard to find, so the banana stem has three bunches along with its blossom can be used as biu lalung,” explained Jero Mangku from Marga Dajan Puri village, Tabanan.
When functioned as ingredient for offerings, biu kayu is also completed with four pieces of other leaves namely that of the banyan tree, ancak (Ficus rumphii), peji and uduh. Biu lalung is fastened firmly on the pillar of the Surya shrine on the right side signifying purusa (male) and other four leaves on the left side as symbol of predana (female). These four leaves are also familiarly known as heavenly plants. In Tabanan, an inhabitant who grows all four plants is Wayan Deres from Banjar Bakbakan, Mambang village, East Selemadeg. (BTN/015)