Story of Bali, Indonesia

The ceremony of Saraswati is to thank the goddess of knowledge; Pagerwesi. to make offerings to God for providing welfare and giving happiness to the world and all its contents and Siwalatri, to give thanks to Siwa, one manifestation of God, for dissolution of sins, such as being angry at a parent or failing to make an offering to the gods.

Offerings to the gods are a part of every ceremony. They usually contain flowers and betel-nut arranged in a small tray made of woven young palm leaf (banten) along with incense smoke (dupa), and-holy water (tirta) accompanied by a high priest's mantera (i.e., holy chanting to call the gods). Other offerings for ceremonies include not only banten, but also aesthetically arranged baskets or stacks of fruit, egg, chicken, or duck, which are usually carried to the temple by women.

In addition to the general community-wide and individual ceremonies, there are many local ceremonies such as those at home, at banjar, at an anniversary of the construction or repair of a local temple, and even at a specific temple on the grounds of the mother temple at Besakih.but at the New Year these same roads are empty, stretching up down the frequent hills, between terraced fields holding green rice, to another district when the rice is golden, on to a third where the rice is so young that the flooded beds seem filled mostly with reflections from sky. The air on every other day of the year filled with sound, high staccato voices s shouting the clipped ambiguous words of familiar speech or artificially prolonging the syllables of polite address, quips of passer by the vendor girls who make a professional art of repartee babies squalling on hips of their child nurses and over and above and behind all these human sounds, the air on other days carries music from practicing orchestra from an individual idly tapping a single metallophone, from children with Jew's harps, and from whirring musical windmills set on narrow standards high against the sky

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