'Lontar' texts clue to old Balinese life

SINGARAJA, North Bali (JP): If your child suffers from chicken pox, you may not need to take him or her to a doctor -- as long as you can master the ancient Balinese manuscript titled Usada Kecacar.

The old manuscript deals with ways to treat people suffering from the illness.

"Much of the old manuscripts' contents is still relevant to modern times," said Gde Suparna, a staff member at the Gedong Kirtya library.

He said if someone was affected by black magic (leyak) a mantra from one of the manuscripts was used to heal the person and expel its bad influence.

Even cockfighting, a traditional folk game, was regulated in the lontar text, he said.

Bali lontar manuscripts consist of different types of information ranging from traditional and religious customs, laws, medicine, literary forms, state administration and history to song compositions and children's stories.

Scholar Raechelle Rubinstein in Illumination, The Writing Tradition in Indonesia wrote that the origin of writing on lontar leaves could not be pinpointed. It is thought to have been derived from the ancient Indian practice of writing on the leaf of the talipot palm (Corypha umbraculifera), which dates back to the first century A.D.

The lontar leaf is from the palmyra species of the palm borassus flabellifer, and has been used for centuries by Balinese scholars to record various issues in ancient Bali.

One important use of lontar leaf writing was for record keeping. Scholars recorded the earlier cross-cultural and interreligious contacts among Hindu, Buddha and Islam in Java, Malaysia and India.

Rubinstein categorized the lontar texts into several forms.

The first form was of personal and communal records, such as transactions for goods and memoranda or pipil desa (the village affairs), and were made on lontar leaves.

The leaves were also used to record supra-village ordinances, such as regulations for rice cultivation and sima subak (irrigation) and cockfighting.

The second use for the leaves was in epistolary matters. Before paper was plentiful and cheap, people from all social groups wrote letters to each other in Balinese on the leaves.

A third group of text written on the leaves comprises the esoteric specialist lore that specialist practitioners must master. This text is composed in Sanskrit, Kawi and Balinese, or a mixture of these languages.

The Ida Pedanda (Brahmana high priest) had his own text, liturgical texts that consist of compilations of weda (prayers) in Sanskrit interspersed with short explanations of the priest's ritual actions in Kawi. Many other specialist manuals borrow from or are influenced by this liturgy.

Pemangku (temple caretakers) had the Gagelaran Pemangku or Kusuma Dewa. Some others read the Purwaka Bhumi, while sengguhu (exorcist priests) read the litany Sudra, wayang puppeteers pored over the Dharma Pawayangan, sangging (artists) possessed the Dharma Pasanggingan and the balian usadha (traditional healers) whose lore is recorded in various medical texts or usada, kept the Usada Kacacar.

There are other esoteric specialist manuals that have a wider readership than the groups mentioned but they constituted the tutur (philosophical and religious treaties) of magic-religious import. The Tutur Aji Saraswati is a book of illustrations. It concerns the philosophical foundation of alphabet mysticism and ritual literacy. As the basic manual on this subject, it is studied by all literate practitioners who are involved in magic- religious vocations.

Another subgroup of specialist writings appears to have no specific association with present-day vocations. It includes the above-mentioned Pangayam-ayaman, which concerns the characteristics of roosters and is used for betting at cockfights.

A fourth type of information recorded in lontar manuscripts is genealogical and historical in character. The term commonly used to call such writings is babad. Most babad are composed in a mixture of Kawi and literary Balinese and are in prose, sometimes interspersed with sloka (Sanskrit verses).

The royal house of Klungkung, the former kingdom of highest status in Bali, is often credited with writing the above- mentioned Kidung Pamancangah. Some scholars view this text as the first major dynastic genealogy.

A fifth distinctive category of lontar text comprises literary works that are often referred to as "belles-letters". Prose texts composed in Kawi, such as the parwa, ancient Javanese renditions of the books of the Indian Mahabharata epic.

Kekawin (poems) composed in Sanskrit, are like the parwa, as many kekawin derive their narrative material from Indian epic literature, such as the Ramayana and Mahabharata.

They relate stories about the gods, demons and legendary heroes, and impart religious, ethical and philosophical teachings and evoke the Indian source of Balinese culture.

The most popular kekawin in contemporary Balinese are the Ramayana, Bharatayudha, Sutasoma, Arjunawiwaha and Bhomakawya, all of which were composed in ancient Java. Other literary works are kidung, poems and geguritan.

Today, the lontar manuscript tradition is one of many casualties of the profound social, cultural and technological changes taking place in Bali as it becomes involved in the development programs of Indonesia's government, and also succumbs to influences from abroad.

A serious threat to the tradition's survival comes from the alternative writing medium of paper, Rubinstein wrote.

The existence of a plentiful cheap supply of paper in the twentieth century has paved the way for a series of technological developments that in turn have had a deleterious effect on the lontar manuscript tradition. (raw)