at one specific time is only a small part of what I think I know about the
village anniversary “birthday” celebration more generally.
But until I became interested in the odalan I had never read Jane Belo’s
somewhat obscure American Ethnological Society Monograph: Bali:
Temple Festival(Belo, 1966 [1953]).Her short book is based on fieldwork
conducted in 19371938 in Sajan, Gianjar district, Bali. It is part of a lar-
ger study on trance conducted between 1931 and 1939. The larger study
also involved close collaboration with Bateson and Mead (1942) and
Bateson, 1970 [1949]). Belo’s book is only 70 pages long and is the best
summary of the ethnography of the prewarodalanavailable in English. It
was first published in 1953. It is impossible to quote all 70 pages of this
classic text. I hope that anyone interested in this essay will make reading
Belo’s book a priority. There are, of course, also other good studies of the
odalan, scholarly (Hooykaas, 1964) and popular (Eiseman, 1990).
To give some idea of what kind of detail can be found in Belo’s thick
description let us look at the day of the odalan celebration itself, as
opposed to the days that precede or follow it. (The total “event” lasts for
one “seven day week.”) The paper titled “An Observation Situation: When
the Researcher’s Scenes Interact” concerns the day of the odalan itself.
She starts out by saying (Belo, 1966 [1953a],p. 20): “Before dawn on the
morning of theodalanthekoel koelbeat to call the men to the temple to
kill the pig (nampah tjeleng).” Thekoel koe`lis a wooden slit gong that is
used to call the villagers, or in this case, just the men. One could write a
thick description of just that activity alone. Unlike Muslims and Jews, the
Balinese eat pig meat, pork. It is the men who carry out the slaughter and
make the offering. They also scrape the coconuts for the mixed dishes
(lawar). The meat is pounded, mixed with coconut and spices, and molded
into skewers (sate ́). Offerings have to be made for the supernatural
followers, thegendaruwa(old spellinggendaroewa). There are gendaruwa
of the volcanic mountains (Gunung Agung, Gunung Batur) and there are
gendaruwa of the temple. There are temporary shrines built inside the
temple and outside of the temple. The priest (pemangku) of the temple
sleeps at the temple during the whole seven day week of the ceremonies:
three days of preparation, the day of the odalan itself, and three days
following the odalan. Each day has a name. For example, the first day
after the day of the odalan itself is called sweet temple festival, or “manis
odalan.” Since the word “manis” is one of the first words I ever learned
in Indonesian it came as a pleasant surprise that I was immediately able
to recognize it. Other words are less easily recognizable and more
“Balinese.”
96 J. I. (HANS) BAKKER