Global Hindu Footprint - Spread Beyond India

[Bharatvarsh2]

Odalan of Hindu Bali:A Religious Festival,a Social Occasion,and a Theatrical Event

I Wayan Dibia



The Balinese call their island Pulau Dewata, the Island of the Gods.

Throughout Bali there are thousands of temples (pura), large and small,

dedicated to the Hindu-Balinese religion, the religion of most of Bali's 4.5

million people. Each village has at least three temples: the temple of death

(pura dalem), the temple of origin (pura puseh), and the temple for the gods'

council (pura desa or pura bale agung). Also, every family has its own temple

within the house yard (sanggah or mrajan), and a family-origin temple for

the family clan (pura dadia). There are also great temples at Besakih, Batur,

Uluwatu, Rambutsiwi, and other places, honored by all Hindu-Balinese.



An odalan is the anniversary or birthday of a Hindu-Balinese temple.

It is a festival that signifies the day the temple was initially completed

and the day the gods, the sanghyang widhi wasa, were first invited to attend.

An odalan celebration is held every 210 days, which is a year in the Balinese

calendar. As there are so many temples in Bali, several odalan are celebrated

on almost any day.



There are different kinds of odalan that last different lengths of time.

The usual odalan celebration, called odalan madudus agung (large odalan), lasts

four days. A small odalan (odalan alit) lasts only one day. A very few special

odalan continue longer than a week. Two of these are the odalan madana and

the odalan ngusaba, celebrated in village temples. The odalan eka dasa rudra, at

Bekasih, the biggest temple in Hindu Bali, is so important it is held only

once every 100 years.



The Balinese regard the odalan as a very special festival, not only a

religious celebration but also a social occasion and a major theatrical event.



As a religious event, the people of the whole village work to fulfill the

religious obligations necessary to the success of the festival. They make

offerings, build temporary altars, decorate the whole temple area, and

pray. Besides religious activity, people have the opportunity to enjoy

performances, given in conjunction with the ceremony, and they can meet

friends and eat good food.



During the odalan festival the people are excited. They are highly

dedicated participants in the festival. Although the odalan needs days of

preparation and monetary as well as other material contributions, no one

complains about working hard or grumbles about the amount of the

donation. In fact, people are happy to be involved in the festival, and to be

able to devote their time to working in the temple. The odalan is for the

benefit of the entire community.



For the duration of the odalan, the temple is the focus and center of

village activity. During the day, people of the village come to the temple to

work together, creating the offerings, cooking food, decorating the temple

area, and doing anything else needed for the celebration. At night they

come to the temple to pray to the primary deities of the Hindu-Balinese

religion, and to be entertained by performances of music, dance, and

theatre. For as long as the celebration lasts, the village is filled with the

mixed aroma of flowers, incense, and food, and with the beautiful sound of

music.



Odalan as a Religious Event



The Balinese regard the odalan as a holy day and a religious festival.

Odalan is a time for Hindu-Balinese people to pray and to thank their gods

through religious services, offerings, and performances. It is a ceremony

held for the temple and dedicated to gods who are believed to be the holiest

of spirits, living in a perfect but invisible world. Everything that will be

used and presented during the festival must be purified-the temporary

bamboo structures, flowers, clothing, and fruit offerings. All these are

blessed by the pamangku, the low-caste temple priest, or the padanda, the

Brahmin priest, with holy water (tirta). An odalan can only be carried out

when nothing bad or impure is happening in the village. A death, for

instance, may result in the annual odalan ceremony being cancelled.



Three parts of the odalan ceremony are integral to the religious

order and ritual of Hindu Bali. First is the ngayab ayab, when the priest

blesses the ritual offerings by chanting a mantra, burning incense, and

sprinkling holy water with a flower blossom. While the priest gives the

blessing, groups of men or women sing a holy song (kakidung) and some of

the men play the gamelan (a musical ensemble of metalophone instruments).

Second is makecan kecan, the part of the ceremony when two traditional religious dances are performed: a female dance, either rejang orgabor, and the baris pendet, a warrior dance by men. Third are the prayers(muspa) which climax the ceremony. When it is time to pray, all of theodalan attendants kneel on the ground. When the prayer is over, everyone is

given holy water by the priest. After receiving the holy water, the peopletake their blessed food offerings home and eat them with their families.



Odalan as a Social Occasion



The odalan celebration brings people together. Day and night the

whole village works together to build the bamboo structures, to make

offerings and food, and to put up the needed decorations. People from

different castes and different social statuses interact closely, sharing whatever

work has to be done for the celebration. Men, women, children, and

the elderly are all happy to participate in the festival. They believe that by

their participation they receive blessings from the gods as well as higher

prestige from the people in the community.



Balinese life has a strong communal pattern, and almost all work in

the village is done collectively. People work together in cooperative

organizations known as banjar, or ward associations. There are several

banjar in each village or desa. The odalan is organized either by a single banjar

or, when an odalan is for one of the village temples, by the whole desa. The

success of the odalan is important to the prestige of the banjar or desa; its

members will be unhappy if the festival is not done well.



During the odalan festival, people are divided into working groups

according to their abilities or skills. For example, those who have mastered

the art of making offerings are grouped into the juru banten (offering

specialists), those who are good at cooking are put in the juru ebat (food

specialists), those who can play the gamelan are part of the juru gambel or

sekaa gong (music specialists), and dancers are part of the pragina group

(performers of dance and drama). A number of young boys and girls will be

chosen to do jobs like finding flowers and getting palm leaves for offerings.

They will be members of the juru suci (offering assistants). The people in

each group are selected by the members of the banjar, under the direction of

the elected leader (kelian). These groups begin working at the sign of the

beating of the kulkul, a large wooden slit-drum.



The odalan is a special time of interaction between old and young.

For the old people, it is an opportunity to transfer important cultural and

religious information to the young, and to teach them the skills required for

the odalan. Some activities are done, and therefore learned, only at the time

of odalan, singing kakidung and dancing the rejang, for example. Only at

odalan is it possible to learn to perform these two art forms or to learn to

make offerings and ceremonial foods.



Odalan is a time to socialize. Old people use the festival as a chance

to meet friends. They are happy to talk with each other while babysitting

their grandchildren. For young people the odalan is a time of dreams, a time

to meet with friends and to find romance. To impress members of the

opposite sex, young people dress up in their finest clothes, work hard to do a

good job, and try to excel in performing music and dance.



Odalan as a Theatrical Event



The temple becomes a theatrical center of a village for as long as the

odalan celebration is taking place. Not just people from that village, but

people from neighboring villages and visitors gather in the temple area to

be entertained by many music, dance, drama, and shadow-play performances.

But the theatre of the odalan celebration also exists separately from

these formal performances. The entire ceremony is done artistically, with a

tremendous sense of theatre. In a sense, the festival as a whole can be

considered a kind of theatrical event.



For an odalan, the temple itself is decorated with extraordinary

elaborateness. Along the road to the temple, tall decorated bamboo poles

(penjor) are erected. Every corner of the temple-pavilions, altars, and

stage area-are hung with beautiful ornamentations: lamak are made from

sugar palm leaf; tamiang, symbolic of weapons, are cut from young coconut

leaf; and from ferns are made decorations called pakupipid. The shrines and

statues surrounding the temple are "dressed" with colorful clothes, usually

checks in white, black, red, and yellow. Ceremonial implements such as

umbrellas, flags, banners, and lances are placed in prescribed locations

around the temple. All this serves to give the odalan a very special

atmosphere.



Procession (mapaed) is a powerful moment in the odalan ceremony,

both from a religious and a theatrical standpoint. A procession leaves the

temple when the holy and sacred statues (arca) are taken to a spring for

purification, and a procession enters the temple when villagers bring their

family offerings. Thousands of people are involved, beautifully dressed in

both traditional and ceremonial costumes. This tremendous group walks

in a spectacular line along the road to the spring or the temple. At the front

are the priest, the village head, and high-caste participants followed by

bearers of ceremonial umbrellas, lances, and banners. Then come villagers

carrying offerings, on both sides of whom are ten to fifteen men or women

singing sacred kakidung. At the end of the procession, musicians play in a

kind of marching gamelan ensemble, called galanganjur. The wooden kulkul

sounds continually. A huge, glorious moving theatre is formed, using the

road to the spring or temple as a stage.



The performing arts-gamelan music, dance, drama, and shadow-puppet theatre-are never absent from any kind of festival in Bali. In fact,parts of every festival ceremony must be accomplished through music,

dance, and other performing arts. In the Hindu-Balinese religion, music,

dance, and shadow-puppet theatre are sacrificial offerings. Performances

are primarily presentations to the gods. At the same time they are entertainment

for the people; everyone is welcome to watch and to enjoy them.



There are different categories of art performances at an odalan

celebration. Sacred and religious (wali) styles are usually performed in the

temple's most sacred, inner courtyard (jeroan). Dances like the rejang,

pendet, baris, and gabor are performed at the same time the priest makes the

ritual offering. They are therefore a necessary and integral part of the odalan

religious ceremony. In some areas of Bali, sanghyang trance-dance and

wayang lemah (the shadow-puppet theatre that does not use a screen) are

also sacred wali arts. Additional performances that complete the ceremony,

but are not a sacred part of it, are known as babali. They are usually given in

the outer courtyard of the temple (jaba tengah), although in some cases they

will be in the temple's inner courtyard. Babali arts include some of Bali's

most elaborate dramatic forms: gambuh, the ancient and formal dancedrama

whose hero is the fourteenth-century Javanese ruler, Prince Panji;

wayang wong, the classical dance-drama that does plays based on the

Ramayana;t he solo masked dance-drama, topengpajegana; nd the group wardance,

baris gede. The third category (balih balihan) is made up of secular

dances and plays staged during the festival as popular entertainment,

usually in an area outside the temple. Among these are kebyar (a solo dance

created in the twentieth century), arja (an operatic dance-drama), topeng

panca (a masked dance-drama with five dancers), and topengprembon(t openg

and arja combined). (The three categories are fully described by I Made

Bandem and Fredrik Eugene deBoer in Kaja and Kelod: Balinese Dance in

Transition [Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1981].)



In conclusion, the odalan is not just a Balinese religious ceremony. It

is also a social event and an important theatrical occasion. The odalan

ceremony brings people together to work, pray, and learn from one another.

People of the village are entertained by the music, dances, and plays

performed during the odalan. Yet basically, the whole odalan festival is a

sacrificial offering to the gods (dewayadnya), and the most sacred of theatrical

performances are a part of that offering. For the Balinese, the odalan is a

joyous event, integrating the religious, communal, and artistic lives of the

Hindu-Balinese people.



I Wayan Dibia, Balinese dancer and choreographer, is Instructor of Dance at the Indonesian Dance

Academy (ASTI) in Denpasar, Bali. He has performed extensively in Indonesia, West Germany, the

United States, and Asia.