Categorized | bali culture

Tags :

Melasti

Posted on 07 July 2008

Melasti procession by the village community starts early at dawn after people rush out to ‘Balai Agung’ temple as soon as wooden bell sounds in the village pavilion, this means the community members are to immediately take implements of melasti ritual parade out of ‘Balai Agung’ temple and to carry deity in such-called Jempana Bhatara en masse seaward. Children and youngsters march during the parade while bearing various implements such as umbul-umbul, lelontek, spears, parasols, and so on. On the other hand, grown-up people are to bear jempana on shoulders and various sesuhunan’on heads, such as barong and demon.
Consequently, all villagers start to march to the beach in a common parade to traverse at least 10-km distance. On the way to beachside, pemangku priests sound holy songs in harmony with beleganjur a traditional marching band sounding melodies to challenge krama desa villagers to walk with high spirit to the finish without being tired.
On arrival at the beach, pemangku priests are busy reading out mantras in accompaniment of sacred sesaji offerings to Sang Hyang Baruna God of the Sea, following the layout of ritual implements and the housing of sesuhunan in the holy site. By offering of sesaji, human beings propose a sense of thanks to Sang Hyang Baruna’s grace to distribute the sacred water of life taken out of an unlimited source.
Such is the atmosphere of the melasti ritual taking place , two days preceding Nyepi Holy Day. Apart from thanking Sang Hyang Baruna, melasti contains also a sense of purification of bhuwana agung (macrocosm) and bhuwana alit (microcosm or human beings). The seaside is a symbol of cleansing these cosmic worlds of any dirtiness.
If the seawater always looks clean, the cause is the living cycle and natural cleansing process taking place.
Former time hermits have defined the sea as eternal holy water resource to dispose of all world and human dirtiness away.

Popularity: 38% [?]

1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (4 votes, average: 2.25 out of 5)
Loading ... Loading ...

This post was written by:

getbalivillas - who has written 228 posts on Bali Dreamland.

now i work at balisynergy as web master officer

Contact the author

1 Comments For This Post

  1. eddon says:

    great articles content..!

Leave a Reply

Site Sponsors

bali sponsor advertising