Collective cremation to be held in Bali

DENPASAR (indo.com): Travelers visiting Bali in the third week of July, 2004 will have a good opportunity to view directly Balinese collective cremation.

The collective cremation will be held in eastern part of Bali, especially in Klungkung, Gianyar and Karangasem regency. Locals will dig up cemeteries to find corpses that were buried five years ago prior to the cremation.

By the end of July, you will see a huge crowd swarming along the streets and shouting, laughing horde of men shoulder gaudy platforms and life-size animal statues, weaving with their burdens in a crazy path. There will be water fights, and boisterous horseplay. The animals spin around riotously and tilt precariously. Meanwhile, small white clothes are strung out over the heads of dozens people who carry the gigantic tower and women carry objects in silver bowls on their heads.

Many families who have corpses join collective cremation for thrifty reason. Individual cremation costs a lot of money. Much money needed for ceremony and the preparation for the cremation that involves hundreds of people. It usually takes weeks and even months to prepare an individual cremation.

Balinese collective cremation is on the list of big event in Bali even though it has nothing to do with the death of someone. The offerings provide symbolic pleasure to the deified ancestors and to the spirits that will be shortly released to God. Most important, however, the offerings will implore God to purify the spirit and return it to earth in an appropriately higher and purer form.

The empty sarcophaguses are snatched up by the shouting banjar's men (society association) and spun and whirled as they are carried in a crazy melee to the cemetery. This idea is to confuse the evil spirits and make them loose its way so that they cannot return and haunt the family anymore. After the sarcophaguses arrive at the cemetery, then the men return again to carry the tower, which represents the Balinese universe.

When everything is ready, the fires are ignited to burn the sarcophagus, in which many bones of the corpses put in it. This may be done by a pedanda (a holy priest from the highest caste), and after the fires have died down, attendants douse the ashes with water then collect the Chinese coins and family members collect scraps of ashes and bone from the bodies. Meanwhile, the lay priest ring his bell and chanting magic mantras that will help the release of the soul and aid it on its journey to heaven.