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Nepukin Sema? Thoughts on Language and Writing in Contemporary Bali Richard Fox* Abstract Recent decades have seen a shift in Balinese sensibilities regarding the use of the islandAos traditional script, and of the texts that are written in that script.
and this shift appears to be linked to a series of wider-reaching changes in the way people set about embodying, cultivating and contesting shared ideals of agency, community and the collective good.
1 That is to say there seems to be a link between, on the one hand, the material practices of script and writing and, on the other, broader styles of what I would call social and practical reasoning.
I wish to suggest that this empirical observation may have some rather important implications for how we think about cultural preservation, and perhaps especially the challenges facing those working to safeguard the future of Balinese language, script and literature.
I would like to present this argument with specific reference to the idea of Aolanguage endangermentAo, not only on account of its prominence in current debates on language and cultural heritage, but also as the questions it raises have special bearing on the issues * Richard Fox teaches at the Institut fyr Ethnologie.
Ruprecht-Karls Universityt Heidelberg, where he is also a member of the collaborative research initiative on Material Text Cultures.
His primary interests focus on the ethnographic and historical study of religion, media and performance in South and Southeast Asia, with a special emphasis on Indonesia and the wider Malay region.
Email: rfox@eth.
uni-heidelberg.
My thanks to Mark Hobart.
Hildred Geertz and Judith Fox for their comments on earlier drafts of this article.
A portion of the materials presented here were originally prepared as a contribution to the panel entitled AoNew Approaches to Religion in Southeast AsiaAo, for the 2012 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion in Chicago.
IL.
The panel was organized by the Religion and Southeast Asia Group.
The primary research for this paper was conducted under the auspices of the Material Text Cultures collaborative research initiative (SFB .
at Ruprecht-Karls UniversitaOt Heidelberg.
It also draws on research carried out with the support of a Fulbright Senior Scholar Award in 2010-11.
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The recent controversy over the place of Balinese language instruction in the National Curriculum offers a useful way into the problem.
Key words: Balinese language, cultural heritage, endangered languages, language ecology, traditional literacy, religion, power, mass media The Language of Protest he protests began in late 2012 and ran through the first several months of 2013.
Those assembled at the events included university lecturers and students, but also community organizers, politicians and others who were opposed to the national curricular reforms scheduled to take effect later in the year.
Among the prospective reforms was a provision stipulating that instruction in regional languages, such as Balinese, was now to be incorporated into the module for local Aoarts and cultureAo.
As the protestors pointed out, the new provision would sharply curtail the number of weekly class hours devoted to the study of Balinese.
and this would in turn mean fewer jobs for certified language teachers, to say nothing of the future prospects for those presently studying for university degrees in Balinese language and literature.
The threat to employment was a concern for many of those directly involved in contesting the curriculum.
Yet this was not always foregrounded in the public seminars and media outlets through which they made their demands.
Rather, the language of protest emphasized heritage preservation and cultural diversity in a manner at once consonant with the ideals of international human rights and the Indonesian state bureaucratic model of national AoUnity in DiversityAo.
3 The call to safeguard (I.
Balinese tradition was lent a Becoming a language teacher is a common career path pursued by those studying Balinese language and literature at university.
Bhinyka Tunggal Ika, the official motto of the Indonesian Republic.
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certain edge by the appearance of regional discrimination (I.
at the national level, deriving in part from the recognition that, unlike Balinese, two of the languages spoken on the neighboring island of Java were to remain as stand-alone subjects (I.
mata pelajaran mandir.
in the new curriculum.
4 Citing both local and national legislation, as well as the Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights, protestors argued that it was the governmentAos AodutyAo (I.
to protect Balinese language as an essential component of regional AoidentityAo (I.
identitas, jati 5 It was argued in the Op-Ed pages of the local newspapers, and on protest banners, that Balinese provides Aolocal contentAo (I.
muatan loka.
within the framework of the national curriculum, and acts as an important medium for the transmission and preservation of traditional values.
6 The protection of local language was in this way cast as a cultural bulwark, not only to regional chauvinism on the part of the national government, but also to the globalizing influence of the tourism industry and transnational media.
Whatever challenges may lie ahead, it seems the protestorsAo efforts to ameliorate the effects of the curricular changes may not have been in vain.
After a series of consultations between `The two languages in question were Javanese and Sundanese.
The Constitution of 1945 (AXV.
established Bahasa Indonesia as the national language of the Republic.
and this was followed by additional legislation requiring the use of the Indonesian language in all communication of an official nature .
ee Articles 26 to 40 of UU24 of 2.
The latter included such things as legal contracts, state documents and presidential speeches, but also scientific correspondence, the naming of buildings and workplace Further, as Helen Creese has noted.
AoIn the 1990s, specific legislative measures were introduced .
t the regional leve.
to support the maintenance and development of Balinese language, most notably the establishment of the Language.
Script and Literature Development Board (Badan Pembina Bahasa.
Aksara dan Sastra Bal.
in 1995 and the subsequent campaign to include Balinese names for all public signs on the islandAo .
9: .
An important precedent for this argument was laid out in a series of articles published in the Bali Post in 1986 under the name Nirta .
ee Sumarta 2.
The language here parallels in many ways that of the broadly western scholarship on Balinese tradition.
see Fox 2003 for a discussion of the central metaphors.
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With the assurance of weekly class hours, the upshot will likely include increased job security for Balinese language teachers, and so a more stable intake of students for degree programs in Balinese letters.
But what of the desired AoculturalAo impact? What are the longer-term implications of this apparent victory for the preservation of Balinese tradition? What I would like to suggest is that we step back from the urgency of the public debate for a moment to consider a little more closely the nature of cultural preservation (I.
and the purposes it is meant to serve.
As a first step, we might ask what precisely it is that Balinese stand to lose should they stop speaking their mother tongue.
and, conversely, what it might mean to speak, read or write Balinese in the absence of its traditional milieu.
Does it matter, for instance, where or how one learns? And with whom? Or perhaps in what script the language is taught?7 Assuming the curricular debate has been settled Ae which one hopes is not assuming too much Ae there is also the practical question of how one might set about AopreservingAo (I.
and AoprotectingAo (I.
a language such as Balinese.
Quite apart from those aspects of the language that are at odds with present-day ideals of social organization and political equality, to study a language in the classroom differs in several See Becker .
for reflections on the importance of script for language learning in a Burmese context.
We may also wish to reflect on a potential disjuncture between the ideals of preservation and those of its object.
For it seems that, even in otherwise Balinese-language publications, the terminology associated with cultural preservation is exclusively Indonesian, when not derived directly from European languages.
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important respects from learning to interact AoorganicallyAo through imitation, trial and error Ai for instance, within oneAos own household and its environs.
We must also bear in mind that, historically speaking.
Balinese was never subjected to the sort of grammatical standardization that facilitates classroom As a result.
Balinese not only varies regionally.
but, in use, its syntax and diction are markedly situational, depending in large part on a highly localized form of shared prior understanding.
9 Arguably, to speak Balinese Aoby the bookAo is to fail to speak it competently, raising the question as to how classroom learning may end up transforming the skills and sensibilities that are acquired through more traditional forms of language learning.
Setting aside issues specific to Balinese, these are obviously questions of wider import.
and they have accordingly been part of ongoing discussion in linguistic anthropology and related fields, particularly among those working with what are now conventionally described as Aoendangered languagesAo.
With over 3 million reported speakers.
Balinese does not generally appear on published lists of languages under threat of impending disappearance.
But I would like to suggest that a brief review of certain recent trends in the scholarship on language endangerment may have something to contribute to our assessment of the situation in Bali.
and this may in turn help to sharpen our focus on the nature and purposes of Aocultural preservationAo on the island.
In the course of recent research I have asked several people to record their conversations on selected topics.
Producing and interpreting transcripts of these informal chats has been informative and at times exceedingly difficult.
Among the more challenging aspects has been disentangling the various threads of what people take for granted when not speaking before Ae let alone solely for the benefit of Ae a foreign researcher.
(NB: All parties to the conversations have given permission for these recordings.
) Reference to commonly known people, places and events aside, the grounds for agreement and persuasion are often such as to require extended commentary before they become intelligible to someone without the requisite pre-understanding.
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Oktober 2012 Richard Fox Endangered Liaisons From the early 1990s the idea of Aolanguage endangermentAo grew steadily in importance among both professional linguists and the development agencies that have helped to support their initiatives.
10 The sense of urgency was in part a response to statistical analyses that suggested global linguistic diversity was in rapid decline.
It was argued that in traditional societies around the world a younger generation, having been exposed to the influences of globalization and market capitalism, were opting for more cosmopolitan ways of communicating that promised increased access to such things as employment, social mobility and entertainment.
Promoted through formal education and related institutions, national and regional idioms were seen to be winning out over local dialects.
and, as a result, it was feared the majority of the worldAos languages would soon die out together with members of the older generations who spoke them.
11 As Himmelmann noted in a critical review of the field.
Ao.
y the year 2000, language endangerment was firmly established as an active field of research in linguistics as evidenced by the usual indicators such as regular and manifold conferences, a steady stream of articles and books, new societies and funds dedicated to the documentation and maintenance of endangered languages, and a special mailing listAo .
8: .
Alongside its rise to prominence within the academy, however, there has also been some suggestion that the basic premises underpinning the idea of language endangerment may require some rethinking.
Several of those working in the field have highlighted the difficulty in defining endangerment and specifying its causes.
Others have problematized established approaches to language as an object of study, calling into Various moments .
Hale et al.
have been cited by different authors as sounding the Aowake-up callAo .
ompare, e.
Himmelmann 2008 with Austin & Sallabank 2.
AoLanguage shiftAo is now seen to be an even greater accelerant of endangerment than a diminishing population .
ee, e.
Grenoble 2011: .
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question such basic principles as the genealogical ordering of languages in terms of descent within linguistic AofamiliesAo .
Austronesian.
Indo-European.
Sino-Tibeta.
12 Still others have noted the inconsistencies, and unintended consequences, arising from the rhetoric of advocacy (Hill 2002.
Duchyne and Heller 2.
Meanwhile, it has become increasingly difficult to delimit language AoitselfAo as a human capacity, with the broader socio-cultural milieu figuring ever more prominently in scholarly accounts of language acquisition and use.
These and related challenges to the received notion of language as a uniform and bounded object of study are increasingly cited in support of an AoecologicalAo approach to the analysis and preservation of endangered languages .
MuOhlhaOusler 1992.
Himmelmann 2.
Notwithstanding nuanced differences among its various proponents, the argument for language ecology has generally centered on redefining the object of study Ae viz.
AolanguageAo Ae as being organically integrated within a wider and established, yet everchanging.
Aoway of lifeAo .
ee, e.
Woodbury 1993.
Hill 2.
This has been understood to encompass both cultural norms and the natural environment, with language performing a mediating role in the relationship between human beings and their surroundings.
The idea that language is somehow positioned AobetweenAo humans and nature has prompted some to argue for one or another form of linguistic relativism, for which Wilhelm von Humboldt and Edward Sapir are frequently Ae if not always Among the spurs to reflection has been the recognition of such phenomena as Aoareal diffusionAo (Enfield 2.
, in which an otherwise unrelated language has taken on the defining traits .
, a tonal syste.
of a language spoken by a geographically proximate community through AocontactAo over long periods of time.
With this decoupling of essence and filiation, the idea of the Aolanguage familyAo seems to lose at least some of its explanatory (On the importance of linguistic borrowing, also see Myhlhyusler 1992: 174.
Here it is worth noting that, while the terminology may often be Wittgensteinian in tenor, the broader approach does not always follow suit.
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The case for relativism has most frequently been made in concert with a call to preserve linguistic diversity, arguing its merit through analogy to the benefits of biological diversity.
But it is perhaps in drawing more directly on biology that the ecological metaphor for language has been deployed to greatest effect.
As one of the early proponents of such an approach observed.
Much of the literature on language preservation and maintenance is concerned with preserving the structures of individual languages.
To me this is reminiscent of the following situation described in a textbook on biology (Morgan 1969:.
AoIn the laboratory it is possible .
hough not eas.
to maintain a population of a single species of organism in a container, isolated from all other species, as a pure culture.
But without the biologist who maintains it, the population could not survive for Thus only two species are related in this situation: man and the organism in the culture.
However, under natural conditions, and even in most laboratory situations, the smallest part of the living world that we can conveniently study will consist of many interacting species.
Ao Preserving languages is often seen to involve putting them into man-made artificial environments such as grammars and dictionaries, high literature, or giving language kits to surviving speakers.
Such measures are unlikely to yield success unless the question of language ecology is seriously asked.
(Myhlhyusler 1992: .
So what would it mean Ae in a Balinese context Ae to ask Aothe question of ecologyAo? On even a quite conservative reading, it would likely entail broadening inquiry Ae and so efforts toward preservation Ae to include a much wider set of circumstances than linguistic study has traditionally encompassed.
14 In present-day Bali this would require, among other things, careful attention It would require a separate, and quite extended essay to explore the implications of a more radical reading Ae one that called into question, for instance, the unity of language itself as an object of study, or of preservation.
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to the articulation of language, hierarchy and exchange.
find for example that, when addressing a superior Ae and so, ideally, a patron Ae one is said quite literally to be Aooffering upAo (B.
oneAos words.
By contrast, when oneAos superior responds Ae speaking AodownAo Ae she or he may be said to bestow a gift of words (B.
mapaica bao.
This terminology parallels that associated with other forms of hierarchically ordered giving and receiving, in which clients offer up (B.
their support both material and otherwise, while patrons bestow (B.
their beneficence in recognition of service and devotion.
speak in a refined (B.
fashion, then, is not simply a matter of politesse.
but rather it is the proper Ae and often strategic Ae positioning of oneself through speech, toward a specific end, in relation to others according to finely graded differences of purity and efficacy .
n which, see Hobart 1.
The material nature of these exchanges Ae and their rootedness in a specific sort of social relation Ae becomes especially pronounced in the use of Balinese script and other forms of writing.
15 What I would like to suggest is that closer attention to orthographic practices may yield important insights into Balinese articulations of language and power, which, in turn, will have implications for how we think about the preservation of the islandAos cultural heritage, both linguistic and otherwise.
A Tale of Two Practices The first example I would like to consider is taken from a wedding ceremony that I attended in a semi-rural ward (B.
of southern Bali in early 2011.
It was a commoner couple in their early twenties who were getting married.
and a brahmin high priest (B.
had been specially invited to complete the ceremony, as is now often the case.
For this the bride and As with spoken language, the idea of ecology has also been used to highlight the embeddedness of written language and literacy in both their natural surroundings and other forms of activity .
Cooper 1986.
Barton JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 02.
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baly dangi.
of the houseyard compound, where many of the important lifecycle rites take place.
There the padanda performed a set of ceremonial procedures, the culmination of which included inscribing a series of syllables, in honey, on the bodies of the bride and the groomAion their hands, shoulders, foreheads and tongue, among other places.
Figure 1 - Inscribing the Body at the Wedding Ceremony The inscription took no more than a few minutes, and so appeared to make up but a small part of the ceremony, which, in its entirety, ran to almost an hour.
16 I was told by several of those in attendance that the inscription was no less important for its brevity.
Yet, on inquiring, no one was able Ae or perhaps The rites performed that afternoon are commonly referred to as natab maduur .
AohighAo, or AoupperAo, nata.
On its own the term natab .
rom tata.
refers to the wafting motion that is used to to draw, e.
, the smoke from incense toward oneAos body before praying (B.
It seems to be an important procedure not only for the rites associated with weddings, but also Ae among other things Ae with upacara ngulapan .
n which, see belo.
and most life cycle rites.
In the case of wedding rites, a prior natab betyn .
AolowerAo nata.
is said to reduce or eliminate the familyAos status as sebel, which is understood in terms of AopollutionAo through opposition to the metaphor of AopurityAo (B.
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willing Ae to offer a more detailed explanation as to why it was 17 For at least some of those present, it seemed the inscription had something to do with purifying (B.
the But the rationale for this explanation was vague, at best.
When I pressed the issue, it was pointed out that a similar act of writing on the body is performed on several other important occasions, including the consecration of priests .
, and during initiatory rites (B.
for those wishing to embark on a new field of study.
In these latter cases the inscription is sometimes said to effect a physical transfer of knowledge through writing on the tongueAiquite literally a gift from Dywi Saraswati, the goddess of knowledge and learning.
But why would one inscribe letters on the body during a marriage rite? What was the inscription meant to accomplish? And how? What was its purpose, or its desired endAiwhat we might in Balinese call its tetujon? There are literary precedents for writing on the body in both Bali and Java.
and I shall return to consider one particularly apt example in just a moment.
But first, for the sake of comparison.
I would like to reflect briefly on a second use of Balinese script, this time from the newspaper.
On Sundays the islandAos leading broadsheet, the Bali Post, carries a section entitled Bali Orti, which might be translated as AoBalinese NewsAo or AoThe News of BaliAo.
18 In contrast to the paper as a whole, which is printed in the national language of Indonesian, the Bali Orti section is written exclusively in the Balinese language, albeit largely in roman transliteration.
addition to local news articles and short stories inspired by the Indic Epics.
Bali Orti frequently prints poems and short stories There are no doubt good reasons for this reticence, not least of which would likely have included a desire to avoid speaking of things Ae especially powerful things Ae of which one does not have direct, and so certain, knowledgeAion which, more below.
The title AoBali OrtiAo was taken by many of those with whom I was working as probably playing off the phrase AoNapi Orti?Ao (WhatAos the news?, or perhaps How are you?).
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addressing topical issues such as environmental pollution, inter-religious marriage and life in the modern city.
Again, these are all written in Balinese language that is printed in romanized script.
There is, however, one marked exception.
and this is a more-or-less regular feature that centers on a brief literary passage that is printed in Balinese script, next to which a roman transliteration appears, sometimes together with a translation into vernacular Balinese or into the national language of Indonesian.
As with the bodily inscription, the question I wish to ask is why? What purpose is served by this juxtaposition of Balinese script with roman transliteration and Indonesian translation? Here it is worth a wider look at the newspaper itself.
Perusing the Bali Post, one often finds letters to the editor and Op-Ed essays lamenting the demise of Balinese language and With the rise of state education and new mediaAi initially radio and television, but now Facebook and TwitterAias Figure 3 - Bali Orti, with photos and articles pertaining to traditional palmleaf manuscripts.
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Oktober 2012 Richard Fox well as the growing number of non-Balinese Indonesians who are currently living on the island, there has understandably been a shift toward the use of the national language in many forms of daily interaction.
In the capital city of Denpasar, for instance, it is not uncommon for Balinese children to grow up with little or no familiarity with what is notionally their mother tongue.
It is with reference to these circumstances that the Sunday feature in Bali Orti might be interpreted as a call to tradition, encouraging readers to continue speaking, reading and writing in Balinese.
The challenges facing written forms of Balinese were given special attention in a series of articles printed on the front page of the Bali Orti section in mid-April 2013 .
ee Figure .
The spread included two photographs, one depicting a palmleaf manuscript, or lontar, and the other of a young man who appeared to be writing on just such a manuscript, probably as part of a competition (I.
The lead headline at the top of the page read.
Palm-Leaf Books, a Documentary Compendium of Balinese Culture (B.
Cakepan Lontar.
Sinunggil Kolyksi Dokumyntasi Budaya Bal.
This was accompanied by a second story, carrying the title They NeednAot Always be Seen as Tenget (B.
Nynten Mesti setata Katengetang.
, as inherently powerful and potentially The latter piece cited an official from the Center for Cultural Documentation in the provincial capital, encouraging readers not to be afraid to read lontar which were traditionally considered dangerous, or inaccessible to the uninitiated.
If the lead story made explicit the link between written language and culture, and the second aimed to alleviate traditional anxieties regarding the power of the written word, the third story confronted its readers with a call to action encapsulated in the headline.
Come LetAos Preserve this Cultural Heritage of Ours (B.
Ngiring Lestariang Tetamian Budaya Druyn.
Opening on a didactic note, the article explained.
The articles cited were published on April 21.
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The word lontar is derived from the words ron and tal, meaning palm-leaves.
The leaves come from the palm tree, and they are dried and used as the material on which Balinese characters (B.
are written.
These texts (I.
, or traditional books (B.
, which are widely known as manuscripts (I.
are made from palm-leaves, and are treated as a source of historical information (I.
sumber informasi sejara.
that is kept in museums and libraries.
It would be a sad day indeed should the method of writing lontar be lost, overrun by our times and technology which are becoming ever more modern.
Besides, there are but few among Balinese who wish to read lontar.
As members of the community, we ought to embrace the contents of this culture of ours, through means such as writing the traditional script (B.
on lontar leaves, or reading lontar together with other members of the community and those youth who have lost touch with (B.
sampun lali.
Aoalready forgottenA.
our Such activities are well-suited to wider use in the effort to preserve the existence of these lontar.
The article called upon readers to safeguard Aothis culture of oursAo and to rekindle an interest in traditional literacy as a means of inspiring those who had lost touch with their cultural heritage.
Here palm-leaf manuscripts are seen to provide access to important Aohistorical informationAo, while at the same time exemplifying local values and ensuring their 21 Put another way, what happens to Balinese It is worth highlighting once again the use of Indonesian terminology in discussing the preservation of Balinese language.
the text of the article runs as follows: AuKruna lontar mawit saking kruna ron lan tal sany maartos daun ental.
Daun Puniki mawit saking taru siwulan sany katuhang tur kawigunayang pinaka serana nyurat aksara.
Naskah-naskah utawi cakepan sany ketah kasambat manuskrip puniki kakaryanin antuk daun lontar puniki kadadosang sinalih tunggil sumber informasi sejarah sany kasimpen ring museum utawi perpustakaan.
Sedih pisan rasany yyning tatacara nyurat lontar puniki mesti ical santukan kagerus antuk panglimbak masa tur panglimbak teknologi sany sayan modern.
Tios punika, akedik arsa para krama sany kayun ngwacyn lontar.
Pinaka krama Bali, nelebin daging budaya sany kaduynang sakadi nyurat aksara ring daun lontar utawi ngwacyn lontar ri kala akyh krama utawi yowana sany sampun lali ring budaya sany kaduynang punika becik pisan.
Kahanan sakadi punika patut kalimbakang pinaka utsaha nglestariang kawyntenan lontar inucap.
Ay Whatever its other merits, it is important to note the extent to which the JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 02.
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wacana pelestaria.
?22 It is with this question in mind that I would like to return to my earlier examples in order to compare the purposes of preserving Balinese script, as outlined in the newspaper, with the sensibilities underpinning other, older uses of writing in Bali, as exemplified by the bodily It is my working conjecture that these two uses of Balinese script are grounded respectively in quite different understandings of media, materiality and what I shall for now simply call conceptions of the collective good.
For this we must now return to the wedding.
Traditional Script: It is Alive! It will be recalled that the bodies of bride and groom were inscribed with a series of syllables.
and the question I had asked was, why? What purpose might this inscription have served? And how was it thought to work? Those with whom I had discussed the rite on the day were either reticent or unable to provide what IAior even they, for that matterAiwould consider a satisfactory answer.
It must be emphasized that there are several possible reasons for such a response, not all of which would entail ignorance on the part of my interlocutors.
Speaking the truth is traditionally thought to be efficacious.
and, by the same token, to speak with undue confidence is to court disaster.
To presume to comment on something for which one does not have ample evidence is to invoke Ae and so potentially risk offending Ae the forces at play, which, as articleAos mode of address (AuCome LetAos Preserve.
and vision of collective life appear to replicate ideals promulgated under former President SuhartoAos so-called AoNew OrderAo regime.
It may be noted in passing that AocultureAo .
is being reified in a way that would arguably be difficult to express without the aid of Indonesianlanguage terminology, raising the question as to whether the ideals of preservation are commensurate with those of its ostensible object.
Lestariang is here obviously a Balinese transposition of the Indonesian lestarikan, with all that it implies.
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we shall see, are not inconsiderable in the use of script and So, in the absence of a readily available explanation on the occasion of the bodily inscription.
I would like to take a slightly different tack, and look to another traditional use of Balinese lettersAinamely, the little cloth amulets called ulapulap that one often finds affixed to newly constructed buildings and shrines.
Figure 4 - An Ulap-Ulap Over a Modern Garage, with Detail.
These small sheets of white cloth, inscribed with various combinations of characters and images, are an integral part of the rites that must be performed before any new structure may be inhabited.
23 By local account, the rites themselves are meant to accomplish three thingsAinamely, the purification (B.
, fortification (B.
and animation (B.
There was considerable variation as to the use of ulap-ulap in the banjar where this research was based.
Many used them for all buildings (I.
and shrines (B.
several others used them only for while there were also a few that did not use them at all.
To date I have not been able to find a clear explanation for the differences from one houseyard to another .
, that one sort of arrangement would correspond to where a given household went for advice on such matter.
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of the building itself.
It is to the third of these aims that I would like especially to draw attentionAithat is, to the idea of animating a building.
The crucial point is that Balinese buildings are alive.
They maurip, as one might say in Balinese.
In order to begin work on a wooden house, one must first kill a tree.
In the act of construction, then, one is working with dead tree matter.
it is for this reason that to inhabit a building prior to its rite of reanimation is said to be like sleeping under a corpse (B.
A dead building is thought to be inert, and so incapable of defending itself.
It is, in effect, open to all comers.
while, by contrast, a living building can repel attack, much as a living tree can defend itself with its bark, or even its thorns.
when harmed, it may then repair itself through its inherent capacity for growth and self-transformation.
So how are these little script-bearing amuletsAithe ulap-ulapAiemployed in the rites of animation? And, in turn, what might this tell us about the purposes of writing on the body? The name of these little cloth amulets provides a first 24 The root word, ulap, has many uses.
To ngulapin is to call someone over.
Aoto inviteAo or Aoto beckonAo.
The accompanying gesture is one of waving with a single hand downward toward the body, much as one does in calling a taxi in much of Southeast Asia.
Along similar lines, there is a set of rites called .
ngulapan, also derived from the root word ulap, in which oneAos AospiritAo is called back either to the body, in the event of illness, or into a coconut, in the case of death, where the coconut then becomes a temporary vessel for transporting the vital essence of the deceased.
25 Here too the movement is a As with such terminology in Bali more generally, the term ulap-ulap is probably best understood as indicating a use or function, as opposed to being a proper name.
For a similar pattern of AonamingAo see, e.
HooykaasAo .
collection of rarajahan.
There is no little uncertainty when it comes to specifying what is AobeckonedAo or Aocalled inAo (B.
OneAos vital energy, or bayu, is a most likely JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 02.
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waving-in toward the body, this time with both hands held out, one moving inward from each side.
In Balinese this gesture is called natab, which is not only the name of the wedding rite performed by the high priest, but it is also one of its recurrent That is to say, both before and after the letters were inscribed on the body, the bride and the groom were instructed to natab, or perform this waving or wafting-in.
Returning to the rite of animation for a new building, it seems that it is the ulap-ulap that does the beckoning.
It quite literally Aocalls inAo (B.
the forces that will bring the building Aoback to lifeAo (B.
ngidupang mawal.
and thereby protect its inhabitants.
Having told a local priest that I was having some difficulty in understanding the use of the ulap-ulap, he suggested that I think of them as working more or less like a satellite dish (I.
, channeling energy in Aofrom on highAo (B.
26 The physical manipulation of written script, he said, is a bit like Aotuning the televisionAo.
Use one set of syllables to reanimate a kitchen.
use another for activating oneAos ancestral Changing the arrangement of characters on the cloth, he added, might be compared to changing the channel on the TV.
Different channel, different program.
Different syllables, different energy.
A given configuration might be appropriate for one sort of structure.
but it would not have the desired effect on others.
Extrapolating back to the wedding rites.
I wish to suggest that a similar transfer of energy may have been the aim of the high priestAos inscription on the bodies of the bride and groom.
candidate in my opinion.
though people will often say it is their spirit or soul .
iwa, atm.
Here it is important to note the potential for there being multiple and conflicting anthropologies at playAiboth in this case, and more generally .
ee Fox forthcomin.
Here one is reminded of the kidung warga sari, which is often sung at a crucial stage in the performance of temple ceremonies (B.
Here the reference to power coming down from Aoon highAo invokes an ambiguous and potentially ambivalent source of powerAileluhur, which is often facilely rendered into English as AoancestorsAo.
JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 02.
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Oktober 2012 Richard Fox By having a series of syllables placed at specific points on the body, one absorbs their energy Ae perhaps a specific capability or faculty Ae much as the ulap-ulap help to channel the forces of animation that bring a newly-built house Aoback to lifeAo.
It is perhaps telling in this respect that in some parts of the island a newlywed couple Ae prior to this rite Ae is called a Aoliving corpseAo (B.
bangky idu.
Of Power and Precedence If the link between writing and power is left unstated elsewhere, it is made quite explicit in traditional accounts of literary composition, where Balinese letters not only channel energy, but are themselves said to be aliveAimuch like trees, human beings, and buildings.
That is to say, they have the power to transform both themselves and the world around As Rubinstein noted in her study of kakawin composition.
AoThe association of spelling with life and death A is more than .
It signifies a belief A that letters have a divine origin, are invested with supernatural life force, and are a powerful weapon that can be employed to influence the course of eventsAo.
She went to suggest that.
AoTo write and spell properly is to preserve that life force and, conversely, to make errors is to eliminate it Ae it is to kill letters A [Thi.
also implies that letters are powerful weapons and that the poetAos manipulation and the scribeAos copying of them is comparable to engaging in battleAo .
0: 194.
Hunter 2.
On this account Balinese orthography is not merely the graphic representation of sound, or of meaning, but is rather participant in bringing about willed changes in the world.
living things, but also as weapons, letters have a dangerously ambivalent power of their own.
This may help to explain why Balinese children in previous generations were warned to be careful when they wrote.
They were told not to study haphazardly (B.
Eda ngawag-awag malajah!).
For to read and JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 02.
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write Balinese characters without the requisite preparation can render you emotionally unstable, or make you stupid (B.
They might even drive you crazy (B.
buduh ing sastr.
It is perhaps like giving a small child a set of Sabatier knives as a play thing.
A good knife is no doubt a useful tool in the kitchen if one knows how to use it.
But, when mishandled.
Balinese charactersAimuch like the knivesAican cause serious 27 This is why only certain types of people are thought capable of safely and effectively handling the ambivalently potent configurations of script that can animate buildings and confer energy on people during life-cycle rites, such as we saw with the wedding.
Though things may have been different in the past, it seems these days the person most consistently consulted for this purposeAithat is, for the handling of lettersAiis a high priest from a brahmin house to whom oneAos family owes fealty, through a patron-client relation that usually extends back several generations.
29 The power of writingAiand the transformative potency of lettersAiare closely linked to both their materiality and to a localized sense of place.
I would moreover suggest that this linkage of matter, place and power Here one might make a playful comparison to students Ae and at times even more advanced scholars Ae who attempt to handle AotheoreticalAo texts for which they are ill-prepared.
The results can be disastrous.
This raises the important question as to why one would require such additional AoenergyAo when newly married.
I would provisionally suggest that the reference to newlyweds as Aoliving corpsesAo .
ee abov.
is highly suggestive in this connection, and that the etymology of terms such as leteh and sebel Ae as perhaps implying a dissipation of vital energy Ae may have much to teach us about the transformation of Balinese ideas about the aims of ceremonial work (B.
gay, kary.
But this is a complex topic requiring further research and a quite separate essay.
For some initial steps in this direction, see Fox forthcoming.
Traditional healers (B.
are also important manipulators of aksara, making oneAos relationship to such a person potentially risky.
Whereas the padandaAos assistance is required as a matter of course .
arriages, death rites, new courses of study, the making of holy wate.
, a balianAos help is only requested in response to an unanticipated problem, most commonly relating to illness, death and/or sorcery.
JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 02.
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, clans and wards (Korn.
Hobart 1.
, temple congregations (H Geertz 2004.
Stuart-Fox 2.
and extended families (Geertz and Geertz 1.
These are relations of but loosely calculated giving and receiving that are sustained through time.
But they are also, significantly, relations that are closely tied to specific places and objectsAi such as rice land, rivers and trees, but also temples, palmleaf manuscripts, cloth amulets and heirloom daggers.
These objects, like the letters that may be inscribed on them, are very much alive (B.
Aiwhich is to say they can effect change in the world.
And this potency is inseparable from their material being, and by extension both their location and the forms of social organization through which they are controlled and deployed.
In the Sunday Papers Recalling the discussion of Aolanguage ecologyAo Ae and its broadening of the field of inquiry Ae I would argue that it is on precisely these three pointsAinamely, those of matter, locality and social relationAithat the practice of writing on the body may be contrasted with what we saw in the Sunday newspaper, where the power of script seemed not so much to be immanent in its materiality.
Instead, its powerAiif indeed it had anyAi consisted in its ability to point beyond itself.
The Balinese characters appearing in the special feature on the Bali Orti page Aostood forAoAias opposed to embodied (B.
Aian ideal of cultural identity and tradition.
and, crucially, this broadly cultural ideal transcended any one of its material instantiations.
Unlike the cloth amulets, or ulap-ulap, the newspaper can be printed over and over again, and yet still remain Aothe same newspaperAoAisomething that cannot be said for these small JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 02.
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script-bearing amulets with their aura of singularity.
30 So it seems we may be dealing with two quite different sensibilities regarding Balinese script.
One is resolutely immanent, the other In anticipating my conclusion, it is worth here reflecting briefly on the preconditions for the latterAithat is, for the use of Balinese script as it appears in the newspaper.
Recent estimations would suggest that Bali is home to some four million people, approximately ninety percent of whom are formally registered as adherents to the state-sanctioned form of Hinduism.
Agama Hindu.
Here it is important to bear in mind that, albeit a majority on the island itself.
Balinese Hindus are nationally a minority, making up less than 2% of IndonesiaAos population of some 240 million.
31 In the early years of the Republic it was in part this sense of numerical disadvantage that drove certain among the urban intellectual ylite to seek formal state recognition for Hinduism.
32 It was feared that, without formal recognition.
Balinese would be seen as backward tribalists who had Aonot yetAo embraced a World Religion.
and they would consequently become targets for conversion at the hands of the countryAos larger and institutionally established Islamic and Christian communities.
To qualify for state recognition, the Ministry of Religion had stipulated certain criteriaAinamely a belief in One God, the testimony of a prophet, the possession of a holy text, and a community of adherents that extended beyond the boundaries of a single ethnic group (Pitana 1.
As we have seen, traditional uses of Balinese scriptAisuch as the ulap-ulap and writing on the bodyAiare rooted in both These days ulap-ulap are commonly silkscreened, regarding which there is a wide range of opinions in the southerly Balinese community where I have been working.
The question of numbers, and who counts as a Hindu, is anything but See Fox 2013 for a discussion of some of the political considerations.
See Picard 2011 for a nuanced account of the issues and events surrounding the emergence of Agama Hindu.
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Oktober 2012 Richard Fox matter and in place, but also within a series of long-established social relations.
They are unremittingly local.
By contrast, the need to constitute a religious community extending not only beyond the immediate locale, but indeed beyond Bali itself, required an account of community that transcended the sort of localizing solidarities characteristic of the islandAos traditional forms of social organization.
The requirement for a canon of sacred scripture further called for an account of Aothe textAo that, unlike older ideas of script and writingAitranscended the bounds of matter and its physical presence.
What we have, in effect, are two parallel sets of relations.
On one side, a materially immanent theory of writing and power linked to a localizing form of social organization.
on the other, a displaced and dematerialized theory of writing linked to translocal forms of solidarity associated with the postcolonial nation state.
Put another way, as I indicated at the outset, there appears to be a link between .
the material practices of script and writing, on the one hand, and .
broader styles of social and practical reasoning, on the other.
Returning at last to the issue of language and cultural preservation I wish to end on an inquisitive note, with a few First, with reference to these shifting sensibilities regarding script and writing, how are efforts toward preservation most likely to transform their object? That is, in what ways will Aopreserving Balinese traditionAo (I.
tradisi Bal.
change the nature of traditional Balinese practices? The Greek Ancient.
Heraclitus, is frequently cited for having said one cannot step into the same river twice.
Yet, on the face of it, this is often precisely what cultural preservation programs set out to accomplish.
Meanwhile, the invocation of timeless ideals Ae AocultureAo.
AoheritageAo.
AovaluesAo Ae is rarely accompanied by a clearly stated account of how their preservation relates to the wider form of collective life that such efforts aim to bring about.
Here I am thinking of those aspects of community commonly JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 02.
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understood under the rubrics of economy, law and politics.
It is important to bear in mind that, were Balinese able to AopreserveAo their traditions wholesale, we would be looking at a return to farming, fishing and high AoIndicAo culture, but also to slavery, internecine warfare and bride capture (B.
, which traditionally began with what is perhaps best described as a period of community-sanctioned rape.
Clearly, cultural heritage is a selective business.
33 But what are the criteria for choosing those aspects of Balinese tradition suitable for preservation? And whose interests are to be given priority? It is important to recognize there is no neutral ground For example, the desire to reduce status markers in the language .
tarting, e.
, with sor/singgih distinction.
serve a particular vision of collective life based on the articulation of equality with a specific understanding of the common good.
These ideals obviously differ from those of the opposed argument for retaining Aolanguage levelsAo that would register distinctions of relative purity and efficacy between, e.
, anak jaba (AocommonersA.
and triwangsa (AogentryA.
To adjudicate between these rival visions of collective life is to upgrade a particular view to the status of universal wisdomAia hegemonic substitution of part for whole (Laclau 2.
What is the upshot of all this? Napi kasuksmaan ipun? Decisions regarding preservation are directed toward a specific purpose (B.
even when this purpose is not clearly stated.
So perhaps we ought to reflect carefully on the purposes of cultural heritage.
What have they been in the past? And what ought they to be now, with an eye to the kind of polity .
r gumi?) Balinese wish to cultivate for the future? To be sure, the protests against the I take this point from a recent performance on the Balinese stage, where one of the comic bondrys characters explained.
AoWe are indeed the heirs .
o traditio.
A (Bu.
you should carry on only with those .
arts of tradition that ar.
fit to be carried on! And get rid of what needs to be gotten rid of! DonAot .
ry to kee.
all of it! (B.
Nak mula ragay dadi sentana, any patut tulad, tulad! Any patut kutang, kutang! De jek makejang.
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But their success has given rise to a whole new set of challenges that ought to be recognized as no less daunting.
Let us hope the protestorsAo success in opposing the new National Curriculum is not ultimately a case of ngelidin sytra, nepukin semaAiAoavoiding the cemetery only to land up in the graveyardAo.
REFERENCES