Balinese Temple (pura)

It is not surprising that Bali is called the island of the thousand temples. Everywhere you see a temple.

There are so many temples that the Government does not bother to count them. There are small temples, very small temples with only a very few shrines; there are large temples, very large temples with more than 50 shrines, such as the Temple of Besakih, the mother temple of Bali. There are even lonely shrines on the oddest places where one does not expect them at all. Every family, every compound, every clan or society has a temple; you mention a society or organization and has a temple. In the compound where the family lives there is the family temple. The desa, village itself must have at least three temples;

Pura Puseh

Pura desa and

Pura Dalem

The clan has its own temple. Subak or irrigation organization has a temple, called Pura Subak or Pura Bedugul. Every place where the water to irrigate the rice field is divided has a temple or at least a shrine. Bali has a whole has a temple, the pura Besakih or the mother temple, where every sect and nobility have their own temple.
The balinese are worshippers of ancestors. The family does this in the family temple or house temple. The village does this in the Pura Puseh and all Bali does this in the temple of Besakih.
In South Bali the house temple is always in the North-East corner of the compound in regions South-West of Mount agung. The reason for this is that the top of Mount Agung is the highest spot in Bali and the highest is for God, Ida Sanghyang Widhi.

Because the people should pray towards and God lives on the top of Mount Agung as the highest spot in Bali and Mount Agung happens to lie in the East that is why in South Bali the house temples is in the North-East corner of the compound. In North Bali it is the South-East corner where the house temple is built.
The number of shires in the house temple depends on the wish of the family and it also depends on where the family originally comes from. That is why the visitors in one house temple sees only a few shrines and in another, right next to it, much more. But in a house temple there must be at least two shrines, the “Sakti Kemulam”; the Kemulan is for God and the purified ancestors and the Sakti is for the producing power of God. No matter how poor the compound is the house temple is there. This house temple can be very temporary built only of bamboo, but it can also be very elaborate; the shrines are very nicely carved and painted with gold leaves.

Only the purified dead, that is to say the dead, who have been cremated, join God in the Kemulan shrine in the house temple. With some high caste people the family makes a shrine for every ancestor who in his life had done a great service to the family, and accordingly in the house temple of such a family there are more than one ancestral shrine.
Near the entrance to a compound there is always a guardian shrine in front of or behind it; sometimes there are two shrines in front of it, flaking it. The guardian shrine is for the spirit that has to guard the primes.
As told before a full-fledged village has to have at least three temples:

Pura Puseh, where the founders of the village are worshiped, always lies in the Kaja sphere, towards the mountains, so it lies on the highest spot in the village; Lord Brahma the Creator resides there.

Pura Desa, the village temple, is built in the center of the village, where Lord Wisnu, the maintainer, is worshipped, because in Pura Desa the activities of the village manifest to maintain the welfare of the village and its inhabitants. In old societies, Pura Desa always has the Bale Agung, a long wooden building where the villagers monthly come together and sit to discuss village matters. The Bale agung is also the place where the Ngusabha ceremony, a ceremony to honor Dewi Sri, the rice Goddess is held. Pura desa with a Bale agung is called Pura Bale Agung, because not every Pura Desa has a Bale agung.

In the Kelod share, towards the sea, so on the lowest part of the village, lies the cemetery. Near it the pura Dalem is built. This is the right place for Pura Dalem, because it is the temple of death or the temple for the dead. Of course Lord Siwa, the Destroyer, resides and is worshipped there.

The site of the three main temples is in accordance to the deep belief of the Balinese that the mountains are for god; the plains, the center of the country, are for the people and the sea, the lowest part of the country, is for the demonic forces.
Besides the three main temples there is the clan temple, called Pura Ibu, Pura Pemaksan or Pura Panti. Outside the village out in the rice fields, is the Subak temple, maintained by the organization of irrigation and farmers, where naturally Dewi Sri, the Rice Goddess is worshipped.

Temple Celebration
The dedication or inauguration day of a temple is considered its birth day and the celebration always takes place on the same day if the “Wuku” or 210 days calendar is used. When new moon or full moon is used then celebration always happens on new moon or full moon. The day of course can differ. The religious celebration of a temple lasts at least one full day with some temples celebrating for three days while the celebration of Besakih, the Mother Temple, is never less than 7 days and most of the time it last for 11 days, depending on the importance of the occasion. The celebration is very colorful. The shrines are dressed with pieces of cloths and sometimes painted brocade; salangs, decorations of carved wood and sometimes painted with gold and Chinese coins, very beautifully arranged, are hung in the four corners of the shrines.
In front of the shrines are placed red, white or black umbrellas depending which Gods are worshipped in the shrines. In front of important shrines one sees, besides these umbrellas spears, tridents and other weapons, the “umbul-umbul”, long flags, all these are prerogatives or attributes of Holiness. In fron of the temple gate people put up “penjor”, long bamboo poles, decorated beautifully with ornaments of young coconut leaves, rice and other products of the land. These “penjors” give the place a very festive look.
Most beautiful to see are the girls in their colorful attire, carrying offerings, arrangements of all kind of fruits and colored cakes, to the temple. Every visitor admires the grace with which they carry their load on their heads.
The offerings in some areas are high as the carriers. These offerings are put in front of the shrines where the owners want to worship. A priest officiates and after he has recited his prayers he sprinkles holy water on the offerings and the people, blessing them in this way. For the people the ceremony is over and they carry their offerings back home and have feast later. Only a small tray with petals of flowers is left behind.
In the evening the ceremonies continues with “pendet” dances or rejang dances. This is done in Sukawati. These pendet or rejang dances are done by young girls, led by the priests and elderly women, assistants to the temple priests.
In most cases on the anniversary day before the ceremony begins the deities are taken to a holy spring for a cleansing bath. In a beautiful and colorful procession “pratima” carved wooden animals, seats of Gods, are carried by colorfully dressed girls to the springs. At the head of the procession boys walk with the paraphernalia of Holiness, such as spears, flags and umbul-umbul, followed by girls carrying offerings.

Then the girls with the “pratima” come. The procession is closed by the musicians who make the procession a joyous affair. Pratima are carved animals, all kinds of animals, which are the mounts, seats, of the gods. Sometimes one sees a statuette or two statuettes perched on them. These statuettes represent the Gods. The Balinese say that the gods have a bath, a cleansing bath, “masucian” in Balinese.
When the procession returns and before the deities are entered into the temple a welcoming ceremony takes place in front of the temple gate. In some places, such as Krambitan, the procession is met by pendet dances. People spend the whole night in the temple. To entertain them or to keep them wake there are dance performances, free for everyone to see.
A cockfight is a integral part of religious ceremony. Because of this a cock fighting although it is a gambling has to be allowed and to restrict it is licensed.
It is an unwritten obligation for the villagers to keep fighting cocks to contribute them to the cockfight that follows every religious ceremony in the village. During the hottest parts of the day one sees a group of men sitting in the shade. Surely enough one will see them with their fighting cocks in their hands. They caress them, massage them and occasionally they let them fight each other. This is opportunity to train them. Cockfights originated in blood sacrifices; it is still a ceremony of blood sacrifice, but now days cockfights are more gambling then ceremony.

Balinese Costume

At home and it work the Balinese like to be free of excessive clothing; ordinarily the dress of; both men and women consists simply, of a skirt called kamben, (the women wear an underskirt tapih) of Javanese batik or domestic hand woven material, and a head-cloth. The women wear this skirt wrapped tight around the hips, reaching down to the feet and held at the waist by a bright colored sash (bulang). Along scarf (kamben cerik) in pale pink, yellow, or white cotton completes the costume. Young girls love gay batiks from Pekalongan, full of birds and flowers in red and blue on a white ground, or hand-woven skirts of yellow and green for feasts, but older women prefer conservative brown and indigo or black silk enlivened by a green, yellow, or peach sash. The scarf is generally thrown over one shoulder or wound around the head to keep the hair in place, but it also serves as a ,cushion for a heavy basket carried on the bead, or to wrap over the breasts when appearing in front of a superior or entering the temple, because, although the Balinese are accustomed to go nude above the waist, it is a rule of etiquette, for both men and women, that the breast must be covered for formal dress. This is purely a formula and does not imply that it is wrong to go with uncovered breasts; often the cloth is worn loosely around the waist, leaving the torso free; but even modernized Balinese, who generally wear a shirt or blouse, wrap the breast-cloth across their chest or around their middles when they wish to appear properly dressed.

For daily wear the men also wear a kamben, a single piece of batik reaching from the waist to a little below the knees, tied in the front and leaving a trailing end that falls into pleats. The kamben can be pulled up and tied into an abbreviated loincloth when the men work in the rice fields. An indispensable part of the men's dress is the head-cloth (udeng / destar ), a square piece of batik worn as a turban and tied in an amazing variety of styles. Each man ties his udeng in a manner individual to himself, taking good care that the folds form a certain pattern and that the end sticks out just right. Conservative Balinese wear the udeng with a comer high like a crest, but the young generation prefers small tight turbans with the four points neatly arranged in different directions. Children generally wear only a lock of hair on their foreheads, but little girls learn feminine propriety by wearing a skirt many years before the boys. Priests dress all in white and one can recognize a high priest (pedanda, "staff bearer ") because be goes bareheaded and carries a staff (danda) topped by a crystal ball (suryakanta, "the glitter of the sun"), symbol of his authority.

It is unfortunate that new fashions in dress are introducing a new sort of class-consciousness. Young elegant feel superior and emancipated from the old-style peasant class when they wear a Malay sarong, a tube of cloth worn snug at the back, folded in front in two overlapping pleats and held at the 'waist by a leather belt. With the sarong go a pair of leather sandals, a common shirt, too often with the tails outside, and a European style coat. This is the costume of school teachers, clerks, chauffeurs, and those in frequent contact with Europeans, who will, in the long run, set the fashion for the rest of the population.

All women in North Bali have worn the Malay blouse (baju) for over half a century, since they were ordered to wear blouses by official decree " to protect the morals of the Dutch soldiers." Women of the Southern nobility started to wear baju, and the fashion is rapidly spreading all over Bali. The Balinese form of baju is clumsy and ill-fitting and does not suit the huskier Balinese women as it does the slim Javanese. Many women cannot afford more than one baju and often let it go without washing. A girl who looks elegant and noble in the simple and healthy dress of the country, appears vulgar when " dressed up " in a tight baju of cheap cotton, not always clean, usually worn pinned up at the breast with a rusty safety-pin. Those accustomed to associate nudity with savagery often refer to the Balinese as " charming primitive people unconcerned with clothes," but however scant and simple their daily costume may be, they love dressing up, and for feasts they will wear as elaborate a dress as they can afford, or borrow one rather than appear poorly clothed to parade at the feast. At temple feasts, weddings, and cremations one still sees middle-aged men in the elaborate ceremonial dress of former times: the white kamben with a trailing end, a rich piece of brocade (saput) tied over the I breast with a silk scarf (umpal) in which is stuck the ancestral kris, weapon and ornament, the sheath of precious wear and ivory, the hilt of chiseled gold glittering with rubies and diamonds, crimson hibiscus over their ears.

Few costumes in the world have the dignified elegance of the ceremonial costume of a noblewoman: the underskirt dragging on the ground in a train of silk and gold; the torso. bound from the hips to the armpits; first is a strong bulang, a strip of cloth fifteen feet long, covered by a sabuk, another strip of silk overlaid, with gold leaf; with gold plugs through her cars, her hair dressed in, a great crown of real and gold flowers,, with the forehead, reshaped with paint and decorated with rows of flower petals, two small disks of gold pasted to the temples; walking with poise in a procession with other girls dressed like herself, in a display of style, beauty, and dignity, The costumes for dramatic performances are as Spectacular as any in our ballets; diadems of fresh flowers and helmets of gold set with colored stones, the body wrapped from head to foot in bright colored silks to which bold designs in glittering gold leaf are applied by a special process in truly theatrical style. A Balinese woman is seldom without flowers in her hair, and during festivals one sees a bewildering variety of bead-dresses. They are then well aware of their beauty and take special pains with the arrangement of the hair, fixed ingeniously without pins. and without the help of a mirror. The hair is combed back with a fan-shaped comb, the end rolled into a bundle (pusung) that protrudes to the left and is held in place tucked under strands of the woman's own hair. Unmarried girls leave a loose lock (gonjer) that bangs down the back or over one shoulder. Ordinarily the flowers are simply caught between the hairs, some-times suspended in the gonjer or over the forehead, dangling from a single invisible hair.

Each type of bead-dress receives a special name, from the simple flower arrangement worn at lesser feasts to the gelung agung, the diadem worn by noble brides. The gelung agung is an enormous crown of fresh flowers; sprays of jasmine, sandat, and bunga gadung, mixed with flowers of beaten gold mounted on springs that quiver at the slightest motion of the head. A beautiful forehead that describes a high arch coming down at the temples is obtained by painting it with a mixture of soot and oil. Little acacia blossoms or yellow flower petals are carefully pasted in a row in the blackened area to emphasize the outline of the brow. They are called tiangana, meaning a “constellation." Girls who have reached puberty cut two locks of hair, brought from the middle of the head, over the ears in two curls (semi) , stiffened with wax to keep them in place.

Men do not wear any ornaments except flowers and perhaps a bracelet of akar bahar, a black sort of coral supposed to prevent rheumatism, but women love jewellery and it is extraordinary that outside of dancers or children the Balinese are one of the rare people in the world that do not wear necklaces. In ancient times men and women wore ear-rings, and ancient statues show that, like the Dayaks of Borneo, they distended their ear-lobes until they hung below the shoulders, weighted down by heavy gold ornaments. Today some men have pierced ears because when children they wore leaf-shaped ear ornaments (rumbing) of gold set with precious stones.

Little girls distend the holes of their ear-lobes with rolls of dry leaf or with a nutmeg seed until the hole is large enough to receive the large rolls of lontar leaf for everyday or their replicas. of gold (subang) for feasts. The subangs are hollow conical cylinders of beaten gold three inches long by one ih diameteri closed at one end, imitating in shape the palm-leaf subang. Only girls wear them and-after marriage they consider the wearing of subangs a coquetry that is out of place, although married women-, of high caste may wear them at feasts. Rings of gold set with rubies are popular, but the most fashionable today are those set, if with an English gold guinea. Bracelets are in good taste only made of gold and tortoise-shell set with rubies, star sapphires, or little diamonds.

The Balinese are as fastidious in the care of their bodies as they are about dress, and people of all classes, conditions permit ting, make almost a cult of cleanliness. They bathe frequency, during the day, whenever they feel hot or after strenuous work, but two baths a day are the rule, in the morning and evening “before each meal. Many villages have formal baths with separate compartment for men and women, divided by carved stone walls and provi with water-spouts in the shape of fantastic animals, or natural pools or streams fitted with bamboo pipes and low Often the favorite bathing-place is a shallow spot in the river,"where men on one side, women on the other, squat on the wat remaining for a long time in animated conversation, scrubbing themselves with pumice stone that removes superfluous hair a invigorates the skin, or rubbing their backs with a rough sti. or against a large stone placed there for the purpose. In, near Gianyar we often saw a group of women sitting in the water in a circle, their feet radiating from the centre, gossiping until after dark.

There are strict rules of etiquette for bathing-places; for example, sexual parts should be concealed even among persons of the same sex. A man simply covers himself with one hand offend his fellow bathers. It would be unthinkable for a man to look deliberately at a nude woman although she may be bathing within sight of everybody in the irrigation ditch along the road. It is customary to give, some indication of one's presence on approaching a public bath. Women wade into the water raising their skirts to a expectable level, a little above the knee, and after considering the possibility of the sit Suddenly in the water, quickly taking off the skirt. Tie process 'is' reversed in getting out of the water: the skirt which has been lying on a stone or held in one band, is gathered up in: front of the bather and dropped like a curtain as she stands up. She wraps it around her hips and walks off without bothering to dry herself.
Besides the ordinary village bathing-places there are sacred pools and bath-houses, some of which have magic or curative, qualities. There it is customary to leave a small offering for the spirit of the spring before bathing. The most famous of these is the sacred pool of Tirta Empul in Tampaksiring, one of the holiest temples of Bali, where a special compartment has been devised for menstruating women.

The Balinese admire a smooth, clear skin the color of gold, and pretty girls have a mortal dread of being sunburned, so they do not like to go unnecessarily into the sun. The skin is kept in condition by rubbing and massaging while bathing, afterwards anointing the body with coconut oil and boreh, a yellow paste that refreshes the skin when hot or gives it warmth after exposure to the rain. Boreh is made of mashed leaves, flowers, aromatic roots, cloves, nutmeg, and tumeric (kunyit) for coloring.

In olden times men wore the hair long, but nowadays the younger generation cuts it short like Europeans. The women's hair should be long, thick, and glossy, heavily anointed with perfumed coconut oil. in which flowers are macerated. The hair is kept in condition by washing it in concoctions of herbs.

When a Balinese has nothing to do he squats on the ground and pulls hairs from his face with two coins or with special tweezers, and women remove the hair under the armpits with porous volcanic stones. Some men wear moustaches, which are considered elegant, but only priests wear beards. It is a sign of distinction to wear the fingernails long, often four inches or more, showing that the wearer does not have to do manual work. Priests may wear the nails of both hands long, but the average well-to-do Balinese lets them grow only on the left hand. In Tenganan I have seen young girls wearing nail-protectors five inches long made of solid gold.
The teeth are ceremoniously filed at puberty to shorten them and make them even. Old-fashioned Balinese blacken them with a sort of lacquer that supposedly protects the teeth from the devastating effects of betel-nut. However, since betel-chewing is losing favors, young people keep their teeth white by polishing them with ashes, although in many cases the molars are blackened, and the front teeth left white. The custom of filing and blackening the teeth, which is widespread throughout Malaysia, has its roots in animistic ritual, to avoid having the long, white teeth of dogs. In Bali today the teeth are filed mainly for esthetic reasons, since long teeth are ugly.

It is plain that the refined and sensitive Balinese make the most of their daily routine, leading a harmonious and exciting, although simple existence, making an art of the elemental necessities of daily life- dress, food, and shelter