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.
|
