The five ritual categories
The purpose of every ritual is to cleanse objects and people.
Holy water, fire and ash can all be used. This can also be done
by rubbing or touching with objects symbolizing purity - for instance
eggs, geese ducks leaves of the dabdab tree. It is believed that
one's soul may have accumulated impurities through evil deeds
during one's life or previous lives, resulting in punishment in
hell followed by rebirth as a miserable creature. In order to
avoid this, the deceased and his soul have to be purified by means
of fire (the cremation) and holy water. A soul which has been
released becomes a god (dewa, bhatara).
Many Balinese rituals - tooth-filings, cockfights, cremations
and others - can be organized at any time, by anyone who needs
them. Many others are held only on specific occasions according
to the Balinese calendar. In all, there are literally hundreds
of rites and festivals that each person participates in during
his lifetime, and a great deal of time and expense is devoted
to them.
Yadnya is a term of Sanskrit derivation meaning "worship"
or "sacrificial rite" that is collectively applied to
all Balinese ceremonies. Each rite may have any number of meanings
ascribed to it, but all serve to create a sense of well-being
and of community, both of which are important concepts to the
Balinese. They are also a means of maintaining a delicate balance
among the various forces in the Balinese cosmos. The Balinese
themselves distinguish five ritual categories, the so-called panca
yadnya.
Ritual exorcisms
The first of these, the bhuta yadnya, are rites carried out to
appease evil forces, personified in the form of ogres, witches
and demons, and to cleanse man and his surroundings from their
influences. Ritual offerings known as Pacaruan are set out by
housewives every two weeks to appease and banish these baleful
influences from the house compound.
An annual pacaruan offering ritual on a much larger scale, the
Taur Agung, is carried out on the day before Nyepi, the Balinese
"New Year." Its aim is the purification of an area from
the bad influences that have accumulated during the previous year.
The rite is usually carried out at a crossroads, supervised by
a pedanda high priest. Five sorts of fluids are used - water,
arak (palm liquor), palm wine, rice wine and blood. Blood is thought
to be one of the most purifying ingredients and in most cases
has been taken from a cock which has been killed during a ritual
cockfight. Afterwards, men carry torches through the village and
make a huge commotion beating gongs, bamboo tubes, and so on,
to expel the demonic forces. The same is done in every house compound.
More elaborate exorcisms are undertaken once in 5, 10, 25 and
100 years. In 1979 and 1989 elaborate Pancawalikrama rites took
place in the temple of Besakih, and the greatest ritual exorcism
of them all - the Eka Dasa Rudra purification of the universe
which is held only once every century - was also celebrated in
Bali's "Mother Temple" in 1979 to mark the transition
to the Saka year 1900. |
