nyoman bali's blog

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 calender is used. When new moon or full moon is used then celebration always happen 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.

What the Balinese do not understand or what is strange to them, e.g. a spring or big tree, is holy. As a holy place it has to have a temple or at least a shrine. A Banyan tree, because it is so large and awes the people, is holy and one sees always a shrine under it, where people can make offerings to the spirit of the tree. Near a spring there is always a shrine and more often than not such a spring becomes the place where the deities go for a cleansing bath.

A whole temple is built around the holy spring of Tirtha Empul at Tampaksiring, a spring of fresh water bubbling up all the time that awes the people so much.

A Balinese compound has always the house temple inside and a guardian shrine outside. The Bale Banjar (community hall) has a temple, a bathing place has a temple or at least a shrine.

It is not surprising that Bali is called the island of the thousand temples. Everywhere one sees 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.

Village or called Desa in Bahasa Indonesia, generally consists of smaller units, called the Banjar.

A Banjar usually has about 150 members at the most. People do not like a Banjar to be too large because it will become too difficult to rule or organize. If the membership is more than that, the banjar is divided into two smaller ones. As with the membership of a temple only married people can be members of a banjar or better said only married men are registered members of a banjar.

The wives are not registered, but they do come to the banjar to help every time there is something to do for them. The young boys form the: sekeha teruna”, youth club, and the young girls are organized into the “sekeha deha”, girl club. They are assigned work in the banjar fit to be done by young boys and girls, such as fetching water from a spring or well when there is a ceremony in the banjar that needs much water.

Do you know Balinese has no family names, but they have complicated system in naming because of the caste system.

Generally speaking there are four groups of people in Bali. The three upper groups are called “Triwangsa” i.e the Brahmin, the Ksatriya and the Wesya caste. In India these groups are called “triwarna”, the three colors.

Bali Island lies East of Java between 8 and 9 degrees South of the Equator. Avery narrow strait, called the strait of Bali, joins the Indian (Indonesia) ocean and the Java sea, separating Bali from Java; it is the Indian Ocean on the world map but the Indonesian Ocean on the map of Indonesia.

Bali’s total area is slightly more than 5000 square kilometers or slightly more than 2000 square miles and according to the last census Bali’s population is a little more than three million five hundred thousand people.