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Bauddha Brahmins in Bali

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

Extract

‘Shaman, Saiva and Sufi’ in 1925 urged R. 0. Winstedt, M.A., D.Litt. (Oxon.), Malayan Civil Service, to write ‘a study of the evolution of Malay magic’. Hoping that Sir Richard Winstedt, K.B.E., C.M.G., M.A., D.Litt., LL.D., F.B.A., might be interested in the non-brahmin bhujangga of Bali, these exorcist priests of the sĕngguhu cast

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1963

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References

page 544 note 1 Shaman, Saiva and Sufi, London, Constable and Co.; The Malay magician, being Shaman, Saiva and Sufi, revised and enlarged with a Malay appendix, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1951, 1961.

page 544 note 2 Malayan and Indonesian studies: essays presented to Sir Richard Winstedt on his 85th birthday, edited by Professor J. Bastin and Professor R. Roolvink.

page 544 note 3 e.g. in Bali, cults and customs, text by Dr. R. Goris, photography by Drs. P. Dronkers, published by the Government of the Republic of Indonesia [1953], photographs 401, 404, 409.

page 544 note 4 The 60 drawings of Balinese brahmin priests and their mudrā by Tyra de Kleen have been published three times at least. The Dutch and German editions, Mudras op/auf Bali, are accompanied by a rather technical text by P. de Kat Angelino with the co-operation of (the later: Professor Dr.) R. Ng. Poerbatjaraka, Folkwang Verlag, 1922/1933. The English edition has a new text written by A. D. L. Campbell of the Victoria and Albert Museum, Trubner, 1924.

page 544 note 5 cf. record BAM LD 339 (M): Bali, orchestre de gamelan et chanteurs de Pliatan, Indonésie; direction A. A. Gdé Mandera, Argo Records, London.

page 544 note 6 (In Sanskrit, synonymous in the classical language with āditya.) ‘Sun.’ Another word for Sūrya is Āditya; the Śaiva priest worships Śivâditya, Śiva as the God of the Sun. This priest, during his ritual, invokes Śiva to burn away his sins and impurities (dagdhi-karaṇa), in this way becoming a worthy receptacle for the God. He then forces the God down into himself, thus becoming Śivâditya/Sūrya. In Balinese daily life the Śaiva priest as well as his Buddhist colleague are indiscriminately referred to as ‘my Sīrya’.

page 545 note 1 A brahmin priest in Bali should have reached the age when the emotional storms of youth have passed.

page 545 note 2 The word veda in Bali is used for the songs of the Brahmin priests, as has been explained by Goris, Dr. R. in his Ph.D. thesis, Bijdrage tot de kermis der Oud-Javaansche en Balineesche theologie, Leiden, 1926 Google Scholar. Buddha-veda in Bali is the name of the death ritual of the Buddhist brahmin priest. In research this priest's manual must have been ill-starred. Goris in his Ph.D. thesis, Appendix i, pp. 136–49, dealing with the Balinese vedas, overlooks Buddha-veda, but this does not affect his results. K. C. Crucq in his Ph.D. thesis Bijdrage tot de kennis van het Balisch doodenritueel, 1928, dealt with only some 20% of the Balinese material available in Leiden in those days, by overlooking p. 260 in Juynboll's, Dr. H. H. Supplement op den catalogus van de Javaansche en Madoereesche handschriften der Leidsche Universiteits-bibliotheek, ii, Leiden, Brill, 1911 Google Scholar, where Buddha-veda was rightly characterized. Sylvain Lévi in his Sanskrit texts from Bali (Gaekwad's Oriental Series, LXVII), Baroda, 1933, presents Buddha-veda as his part iv, pp. 71–85, announcing it on p. xxix as containing ‘the full daily worship of the Buddhist priest’. It is neither daily worship (but death ritual) nor full, because in this text edition it contains only the ‘Sanskrit’ songs and mantras sung, spoken, muttered, or not to be revealed by the priest (tan kav011Bḍar) and not the Old Javanese directions for his actions, though Lévi did print their Śaiva counterparts in his part I, Veda-parikrama, being the ritual of the Śaiva priest. Moreover, Lévi ends at a point in the Buddha-veda long before the end of the work. Finally I am not sure whether Buddha-veda and other treatises on Buddhist death ritual, composed by padandas, ordained priests, originating from the library of palm-leaf MSS (now) Gĕdong Kirtya, Singaradja, Bali, and accessible in typewritten copies in the library of the University of Leiden, are being used to the full extent for the investigation of the ritual concerning cremation and the subsequent festivals recurring thereafter called śrāddha, dealt with in that famous poem, Nāgarakṛtāgama. To be complete in dealing with this subject: a second MS of the Buddha-veda has been incorporated in the Kirtya as No. 2255. The Leiden and the Singaradja MS appear to originate from the same source; even Lévi's extract seems to be derived from it.

page 545 note 3 This manual deals with the daily ritual of the Buddhist priest; here too the directions for his actions are written in Old Javanese, his words for vedas and mantras in ‘Sanskrit’. As far as I know, this text is not yet available in public collections; it is my intention to publish both BV and PVB. The ‘Buddhist data from Balinese texts’, being pp. 109–33 in F. D. K. Bosch, Selected studies in Indonesian archaeology (Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, Translation Series, 5), The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1961, form part of these texts.

page 546 note 1 So also regularly in the rituals in the Sādhana-mālā, e.g. (GOS, xxvi) pp. 51, 53, and frequently, with minor variations. The drawings in Tyra de Kleen's Mudras are incomparably better and fuller than the clumsy drawing in fig. 2 here.

page 546 note 2 Sanskrit niṣṭya, or (more probably) nisṭha 1

page 546 note 3 Perhaps derived through a Middle Indian form, rather than directly from Sanskrit gaṇayilikā.

page 546 note 4 Sādhana-mālā (GOS, xxvi), pp. 19, 26, 39, 58, 62, 72, etc.:

oṃ svabhāvaśuddhāḥ sarvvadharmmāḥ svabhāva-śuddho ‘ham.

page 546 note 5 Sādhana-mālā (GOS, xxvi), p. 58:

sarvva evāmī dharmmāḥ prahṛtyā svarūpeṇa pariśuddhāḥ aham api prakṛtipariśuddha ilyādikam āmukhayet. … sarvvadharmmaprakṛtipariśuddhatām āmukhīkṛtya sarvvadharmmaśūnyatāṃ dhyāyāt.

page 547 note 1 Svabhāva and prakṛti are well known from Śaivasiddhānta philosophy as dealt with by Zieseniss in BKI, XCVIII, 1939, 75–223, and Dvīpāntara-piṭaka, vols. I, in, iv, vi, New Delhi, International Academy of Indian Culture, 1957–62.

page 547 note 2 The following ten points of the universe plus the centre have been borrowed from p. 8; in such-like manuals an explanation is not always given the first time it is needed. An explanation for the bījâkṣaras, kernel syllables, is not to be found in previously published Buddhist texts from Indonesia such as J. Kats, Sang hyang kamahdyanikan, ’s-Gravenhage, Martinus Nijhoff, 1910, or H. Kern, De legende van Kuñjarakarṇa (Verspreide Geschriften, 10), ’s-Gravenhage, Martinus Nijhoff, 1922. It consists of the quintuple syllables Sa-Ba-Ta-A-I, standing for Śiva's five aspects, viz. Sadyojāta, Bāmadeva, Tatpurusa, Aghora, and Iśāna, followed by na-ma-Śi-vā-ya ‘honour be to Śiva’ (this order is also followed in PVB, 1, 9 and—apart from one deviation—also on p. 31 in the Astuti Yama Rāja stava, on which I am preparing a publication).

Although the text runs: daśa-dik, with no. 11, Madhyā, the centre, the supreme bījákṣara ong is added. Eleven = eka-daśa, which word immediately reminds one of the well-known Eka-daśa-Rudra (cf. van Lohuizen-de Leeuw, J. E., ‘The Dikpalakas in ancient Java’, BKI, cxi, 4, 1955, 356–84, esp. p. 382 Google Scholar).

page 547 note 3 Hung phaṭ is perhaps the most usual end of a mantra in the PVB.

page 547 note 4 After angkuśa (for the god Indra; east) and pāśa (Yama; south) one would expect the usual ‘weapons’ or emblems for west and north. From the quotation in the next footnote, it appears that posta is a mispronunciation for sphoṭa.

page 547 note 5 cf. Sādhana-mālā (GOS, xxvi), p. 199:

oṃ ākarṣaya jaḥ,

oṃ vajrapāśi praveśaya huṃ,

oṃ vajrasphoṭa bandhaya vaṃ,

oṃ vajrāveśa vaśīkuru hoḥ.

The four bījâkṣara jah-hum-bam-ha (sic on pp. 6 and 36 of PVB) in the next line are summed up as jah-hum-bam-oh (PVB, 6, 36) (figs. 6–9). This discrepancy would greatly have puzzled and annoyed me, if in the Śaiva-ritual I had not found consistently in one context the correct ‘Agni-Rudra’ and as consistently in another context ‘A-ni-Rudra’, which I consider to be an old mistake. The four bījâkṣara are found together in PVB, 13, after the four ślokas of Sang hyang veda-mantra, also known as Datah arya after the four initial syllables, when in the final pakětis, directions for sprinkling, the priest is instructed to say (or think) inter alia: Ong jah gang Jagat-karaṇāya namah svāhā ‘Honour to the Cause of the World’; ong hung Candra-Devatā-Mahā-Ganggāya namah svāhā ‘Honour to the Moon-God-Great- Ganggā (?)’; ong bang Deva-śakti Mahā [?]; ong oh Sama-karaṇāya [?].

page 548 note 1 Mvang ‘and’ om. PVB, 36.

page 548 note 2 This line om. PVB, 36.

page 548 note 3 Basing myself on KBNWdbk., II, 604, with tri-pura as the translation oi tri-śakti, I take it that the priest tries to eliminate the evil power of the threefold city, residence of the enemies of the gods, by worshipping their conqueror Śiva with ong.

page 548 note 4 This line om. PVB, 36.

page 548 note 5 Whether we read samayastĕm with PVB, 7, or twice samahyastĕm with PVB, 36, my translation is a mere guess.

page 548 note 6 Kats, op. cit., 98, gives a full explanation of ah ang.

page 548 note 7 It is not clear to me what is meant by these three demons; we have just had catur-devayakṣa.

page 548 note 8 This line om. PVB, 36.

page 548 note 9 PVB, 7: ong.

page 548 note 10 Balinese pronunciation and spelling make it possible to consider vanda as Sanskrit vadha.

page 548 note 11 This line om. PVB, 7.

page 549 note 1 In Balinese manuscripts, we frequently find śa for śaraṇa ‘means, by means of (the following mantra)’. Here, śa could be an abbreviation for (tri)śa(raṇa-gamana)—in effect, ‘he then recites the (threefold) refuge-formula

(I take refuge in the Buddha, I take refuge in the Doctrine, I take refuge in the Community of monks)’.

page 549 note 2 PVB, 7: satva-satveka: 38 and diet.: satva-satva kampuh byahtam.

page 549 note 3 PVB, 7: vakse-vakse; 38 and dict.: vakse-vaksa; all three: danaṃ. Professor Kuiper considers a possible vangśe-vangśe parâparam, but does not feel sure about it.

page 549 note 4 PVB, 1 and 38, diet.: vibuhsanam.

page 549 note 5 PVB, 7: taslcaram; 38 and diet.: saśkaram.

page 549 note 6 Could this veda in praise of the bhava have been chosen because of the bhava here ?

page 549 note 7 PVB, 7 and 38: param dvaksam; dict, paridvaksam.

page 549 note 8 Diet, praṇāmy aham.

page 549 note 9 PVB, 7 and 38: edam praddhasyatah; dict, edam pradaksyatah.

page 549 note 10 PVB, 38: tatasadhya; dict, patasanya.

page 549 note 11 Diet, pāduke.

page 549 note 12 PVB, 7: avāpnayāt.

page 549 note 13 Diet. only.

page 550 note 1 J. Kats, op. cit., 110; the 5 vijâkṣara: ah for Vairocana, hung for Akṣobhya, trang for Ratnasambhava, hrīh for Amitābha, ah for Amoghasiddhi.

page 550 note 2 These three lines are a repetition; supra, they were concluded by a final line which does not occur here; the ritual goes on with anambut gaṇitri ‘clasping the string of beads’ (which has been put on earlier during the ritual), see figs. 22–26.

page 550 note 3 Dr. W. H. Rassers, Pañji, the culture hero: a structural study of religion in Java (Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, Translation Series, 3), ’s-Gravenhage, Martinus Nijhoff, 1959, 63–91; ‘Śiva and Buddha in the East Indian Archipelago’; relevant literature is here dealt with. I might only add: I Gusti Bagus Sugriwa, Ringkasan Tjeritera Sutasoma, diterdjemahkan dan disadur induknja kakawin Sutasoma, 1956; I Gusti Bagus Sugriwa, Sutasoma, ditulis dengan huruf Bali dan Latin; diberi arti dengan bahasa Bali dan bahasa Indonesia, 22 fascicules, 1959–62; both published by Balimas, Denpasar (Bali).