It is actually beside the point to ask a question like: “Is Christmas more
important than the Super Bowl?” Is the odalan more important than an
international badminton match? (Badminton is a very important sport in
Southeast Asia.) That would be a moral, ethical, and philosophical ques-
tion (Dawkins, 2012).For the Symbolic Interactionist researcher what is
the most interesting is that both have common features. The study of
rituals, sacred or secular, is fascinating. Once we know the “scorecard” we
can start to appreciate the interactions. When it comes to the study of Bali
it takes a bit of effort to start to get to “know the names of the players.”
We have to move outside of our comfortable frame of reference and start
to think in radically different ways. We have to approach the subject with a
broader horizon. The temple ceremony is a public event celebrated by the
whole community. It is mandated by a calendar with which we are unfami-
liar and which seems strange to us. To catch a sense of the “deeper play”
involves we have to be willing to think about several topics in a new way.
So please bear with me as I try to begin to explain some of the rudiments
of “the game.” Try to move outside of the frame of reference that may feel
most comfortable to you as a European or North American. To even begin
the “thick description” of the Balinese temple festivals it is necessary to set
the stage and describe the “definition of the situation” (Bakker, 2007,
pp. 991992; Bakker, 2014).
TEMPLES AND THE BALINESE CALENDAR
There are more than 20,000 temples on the island of Bali. The temple is
called apura; there are many types of pura (Schulte-Nordholt, 1991; van
Baal, 1969). Each pura has an individual temple ceremony called anodalan.
The festival is a ritual purification of the temple and it must be held on
precise days as designated primarily by thewuku(uku, pawukan) calendar.
The wuku calendar is based on a 210-day lunar cycle. The 210 days are
divided into weeks that are ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two
and one day long. (The one day week is binary; it alternates between a
week day and a nonweek day!) Each day of each week has a very specific
meaning and astrological significance.
The Balinese calendar is complicated by three layers. There are two solar
calendarsystems: the Gregorian (European Roman Catholic) and the Saka
(an Indic Civilization “Hindu” calendar). But the most important calendar
for rice cultivation is the lunar wuku calendar. Some pura festivals are
94 J. I. (HANS) BAKKER