Balinese Life

Devotional Services and Worship at Temple Festival

As a tourist destination, Bali bears some nicknames given by tourists. One of them is the Island of Thousand Temples. In reality, there must be more than this number. In Bali, there are approximately 500 villages. Suppose that each village supports three obligatory temples (puseh-desa and dalem temple) they will totally come to 1500. Assuredly, these have not included yet the sad kahyangan temples, temple of profession, family or clan. If observing the Balinese calendar, we will see averagely 10 times temple festival organized within each month. In other words, there will be a festival every three days at different temples across Bali. On that account, the temple festival is just about held endlessly all the year round.

The Hindus may determine their temple festival based on lunar system falling once a year or coincides with the full moon or on pawukon system falling every 210 days. It very much depends on when the inauguration ceremony was held.
Every temple has its own supporting devotees. A village temple is supported by its village members and a clan temple by its clan members, while the sad kahyangan and other greater universal temples are operationally supported by some villages nearby. However, they also give the opportunity to other devotees beyond those villages to lend a hand through a volunteer work. Meanwhile its worship is open to all devotees.
Preparation of a temple festival is habitually done in compliance with its scale. Grandiose scale will need more preparation and ingredients. Some days in advance people have been bustled to collect those ingredients. Men prepare some bamboos required for installing platforms, penjor poles and base of the offerings, coconut and leaf of young coconut and palm. Meanwhile, the women will be assigned to make the offerings along with its complex filler like assorted cakes, beans and so forth. All are carried out voluntarily and with mutual assistance or gotong-royong.
Then, one day before the festivity, devotees in medium Balinese costume are generally busy undertaking the last preparation. Penjor poles are erected, shrine paraphernalia installed, if required they also slaughter pigs and some chicken. The flesh is then used to make the filler of the offerings such as twisted, half-done, asem satay, caru exorcism oblation and so forth.
Right on the festival day, all devotees pay homage at temple. Women balance their colourful gebogan filled with assorted fruits, cakes and flower as presentation in uniformed costume, namely kebaya shirt and sarong tightened by a piece of sash on the waist. They march in elegant swaying movement and look so nice. This parade is called mapeed. It reflects their togetherness and solemn devotion to God. Joy and smile have started at home before paying homage to the Creator.
As the series of the festival, it’s usually held the melasti procession where the holy effigy (representation of deity) and other ritual paraphernalia are brought to source of water to be spiritually purified. When the distance is within easy reach, they will go on foot but if it’s too far they will go by trucks. This procession will be accompanied by dynamic bleganjur gamelan orchestra. Fierce heat of the sun or drizzle never discourages them; they keep on walking to the end of destination. Having returned from this act, the participating devotees are welcomed by a pendet dance. Another dance like the rejang is also performed as symbol to welcome the deities attending the festival. It is a special slow elegant dance particularly presented by young girl. At the end of the ritual procession, it will be completed with the Sidakarya mask dance, hoping that everything is okay during its execution and all blessed with bliss.
At a smaller temple, the festival may only transpire for one day. However, the larger the temple is the longer the time required to give a flexible opportunity to devotees paying homage. It indirectly means that it has more supporting devotees and may be coming from remote places. By giving longer period of worshipping, devotees are enabled to choose their convenient time to come.
Another unique activity may be the cockfight held as completion of the ritual. It starts with the fight of a pair of payung pagut paraphernalia, eggs and coconut. Sometimes it is resumed with the real cockfight. In Bali, a misunderstanding occurs on the difference between the tabuh rah and tajen. Tabuh rah is a ritual cockfight of maximally three rounds without involving any bets and only attended by authorized devotees. Meanwhile, tajen is gambling cockfight that involves bets and is attended by external parties consisting of gamblers, promoters, supporters and the like and unnecessarily associated with ritual event. The prevailing law strictly prohibits the latter and has been considered to be a social disease. (BTN/029)

Galungan Day
A Holiday Bursting With Homage In Bali

For the Balinese (Hindus), Galungan is paweton jagat (ritual festivity on the creation of the universe along with its contents). When was this macrocosm precisely created and how old is it now? No one knows it exactly! However, the Balinese celebrate Galungan just like they do with their birthdays in compliance with the Balinese calendar and not by their date of birth.
In addition, the celebration of Galungan conveys the meaning as the triumph of dharma (righteousness) against adharma (unrighteousness). Dharma and adharma are consistent with the day-to-day lives that involve proper and improper things. The summit of triumph of dharma is celebrated every 210 days, on Buda Kliwon Dungulan—this year it falls on Wednesday, 29 December 2006.
A series of Galungan festivities were commenced on Sugihan (23 December) and will end on Pegat Uwakan day (3 January 2007). On the following day, Umanis Galungan (Thursday, 30 November 2006) it is followed by a mutual visit among families, neighbours and wider general public to maintain social relationships.

"Pecalang" and the Convenience of Worshipping

On visiting a temple festival, you will find some officers in traditional costumes helping devotees to cross the road leading to temple or controlling the queue in front of the entrance gate at temple. They are easily recognized due to marked colours of the clothing worn like red, black and white. They wear headdress, dark vest, checkered chessboard-like saput covering the waist and under but over a kamen or sarong.

This officer is called pecalang, a supporting apparatus of the customary village in charge at security affairs. They play an important role in the execution of customary village’s activities like temple festivals and other ritual procession. On account of their presence, devotees can worship conveniently. The number of devotees allowed to enter has been arranged in such a way that meets the space availability. Except for on this festival, they are also responsible for the security of the territory at their customary village.
Historically, this pecalang has existed during the kingdom administration in the past. Other than to maintain the village territory, there are also some kinds of pecalang in charge at different fields, such as pangliman toya (at subak irrigation cooperative), pecalang bendega (fishermen community), jagawana (forest territory) and sawang tanggur (cockfight event). On some occasions today, pecalang are also involved in other events in cooperation with civilian defence units and police. (BTN/029)