What Indonesia - Bali is all about ?

We cannot go further without introducing the person of Rangda, already several times alluded to, who under diverse aspects is the other great protagonist in the Barong play. Rangda is the Balinese word for widow; but to the idea of a widow is attached a certain awe, even a degree of fear or horror. For a widow is the wife of a spirit and ought really to have given up her bodily form when her husband died, and to have followed him to the underworld. It is easy to see how naturally a widow comes to be associated in the popular imagination with the graveyard which is the home of the dead, and how easily the name Rangda has become attached to the Witch Widow who occupies such a terrifying place in the popular imagination of the Balinese. In fact the name Rangda covers all magical manifestations, even if they have noth7mg to do with witches or widows, and the mask of Rangda is used for a material revelation of a deity in its angry state, for Giriputri wife of Civa, for Ravana or the rakshasa husband of Surpanaklia, for the magical transformation of Basoer in the play of that name, for Durga, Goddess of Death, or for any monstrous apparition when a special mask is lacking; as in another Topeng play, for the swine's head of the king of Bedoeloe, or for the White Elephant in the Gamboeh story of Amad Mohamad as well as for Tjalonarang and all other witches.

The stage representation of Rangda is no less fearful than her sculptured image in the Poera Dalem. The glistening white mask, with golden brow, immense protruding eyes, and huge white teeth and fangs that curve upwards to her forehead, is an object of terror and also of veneration. Like the Barong mask it lives in the temple, in a basket raised above the ground. There may be two or even as many as five Rangda masks which are worn by the different degrees of manifestation of her being.
The mask is furnished with long, ingeniously woven tresses of goat's hair, white or mottled, which hang from a great bushy wig to the ground, completely covering her back, and falling over the thin sausage-like entrails, red, black and white, which hang between her pendulous breasts. Sometimes the breasts are flat, dangling pockets with a little hair attached, and a button to represent the nipple. A long tongue of black or scarlet cloth, with flame-shaped ornaments of gold and scarlet leather, hangs from her gaping jaws. Flames ray from her mouth and head to symbolize the consuming fire which issues from her. Her legs and arms are covered in striped red and black stuff, edged with shaggy hair. She wears a perforated leather apron, rather like a Masonic apron

A Garuda head finishes her belt behind and a long strip of leather like a wide, curved tongue, hangs over each thigh. She wears a loose check coat, like an old-fashioned bed jacket, and gloves with hairy fingers and very long semi-transparent nails, such as are worn also by Djaoek dancers. These long trembling nails are the first thing one sees of Rangda when she issues from between her umbrellas, covered in the white cloth of invisibility, painted with magic symbols and figures, which quells her foes when she waves it against them. This magic, cloth and these magic nails are an inseparable adjunct of the Rangda mask even when it does not cover the dread person of the Widow. Equally indispensable are the tall curved slender banners (oemboel-oemboels), which when held down with their points crossed in front of her symbolize her flight through the air; her hoarse, crowing laughter, and the defiant exultation with which she flings herself backwards and forwards, till her tresses sweep the ground behind and before.
One remembers Rangda marching forward, covered in a grey figured cloth, under a green-fringed white umbrella; and beginning to dance, fingering her banners with her long-nailed black furry paws, uncovering her grey hair flung frivolously with blossoms, and tottering blindly round, her tresses streaming; then retiring in a slow prance, till she stands again immobile beneath her banners in meditation, her back turned to the dance-floor. One remembers her hung with entrails, her great breasts swinging as she gallops up the ground; or dances a long solo in frantic levity; following the fleeing Barong, and climbing with her hands all over him, as if polishing the mirrors of his coat. Wherever he turns she rushes and peers into his face, standing at his head as if he were her mount. One remembers also the Barong cuddling up to Rangda and biting her, so that for a moment the two monsters became one.

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