LITMIR.BIZ

      Balinese women present offerings at a temple festival (left). Temple festivals (opposite) and rituals are an integral part of Balinese life. Some rituals are only held on holy days such as Galungan. Other rituals, such as the tooth filing ceremony, can be organized by anyone who needs them. Balinese rituals are grouped into five ritual categories, or panca yadnya. While each rite has a different meaning, their purpose is the same—to cleanse objects or people and foster a sense of wellbeing and community.

      Bali has often been called the “Land of a thousand Temples”. Hindu temples, from small shrines in the rice fields to sprawling complexes belonging to large towns, are certainly the most important institution on the island, and they can be seen everywhere. By the sea, on desolate promontories, in caves, on the highest mountains, even entangled in the roots of banyan trees, large and small temples appear as a natural component to the island’s geography.

      From earliest times, before the overwhelming influence of Hindu temple building arrived from Java a thousand years ago, there have been plots of consecrated ground, where altars, cairns, and stone enclosures marked a kind of primitive temple. Such temples still can be seen in the eastern part of the island where isolated villages protected these old forms.

      Every Balinese community has at least three main temples: the foundation temple of the original village, often hundreds of years old, a town temple for communal celebrations and the temple of the dead for the gods associated with death and cremation. The reason for this division is to maintain a balance between the innumerable contending forces of the invisible world, which to the Balinese has a trenchant reality.