As a tourist destination, bali bears some nicknames given by tourists. One of them is the Island of a Thousand Temples. Inreality, 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), which throughout the island will total well over 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 that there are at least 10 temple festivals organized within each month. In other words, there will be a festival every three days at different temple across Bali. On that account, the temple festivals are continuously held year round.
The Hindus may determine their temple festival based on the lunar system falling once a year or coinciding with the full moon or on the pawukon system falling every 210 days.
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 volunteer work. Meanwhile its worship is open to all devotees. Preparation for a temple festival is habitually carried out in compliance with its scale. Grandiose scale will need more prepation and ingredients. Several day in advance people begin bustling to collect the proper ingredients. Men prepare some bamboo required for installing platforms, penjor poles and base of the offerings, coconut and leaves 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 festivy, devotees in traditional Balinese costume are extremely busy undertaking the final preparations. Penjor poles are erected, shrine paraphernalia installed, if required they also slaughter pigs and some chickens. 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 the temple. Women balance their colorful gebogan filled with assorted fruits, cakes, and flowers as presentation in uniformed costume, namely kebaya shirts and sarongs tightened by a sash worn around the small of the waist. They march in elegant swaying movements to the temple.This parade is called mapeed. It reflects their togetherness and solemn devotion to God.
For the melasti procession, the holy effigy (representation of diety) and other ritual paraphernalia are brought to a source of water to be spiritually purified. If the distance is within easy reach, they will go by foot but if it’s too far they will go via trucks. This procession is accompanied by a dynamic bleganjur gamelan orchestra. Fierce heat from the sun or rain never discourages them; they keep on walking till they meet their destination. Having returned from this act, the participating devotees are welcomed by a pendet dance. Another dance called the rejang is also performed as a symbol to welcome the dieties attending the festival. It is a special slow elegant dance usually presented by young girls. The end of the ritual procession is completed with the Sidakarya mask dance.
At the smaller temple, the festival may only transpire for one day. However, the larger the temples is the longer the time required to provide a flexible opportunity to devotees paying homage.
Another unique activity may be the cockfight held as a completion of the ritual. It start with the fight of a pair of payung pagut paraphernalia, eggs and a coconut. Sometimes it is resumed with a real cockfight.

News by International Bali Post

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