Panca Bali Krama (2)

The Panca Bali begins by preliminary ritual weeks before. I shall try to describe them in brief. The first process was obtaining two consecrated holy water for distributed to all part of Bali. Every village chiefs came to Besakih with decorated bamboo jar (a substitution for kalasha, I think). Every of them got two kind of holy water. One was for purification of their respective villages and peoples, and the other, I think has such an interesting significance. This one consecrated water was used as magical seal applied on the departed souls that not yet ceremoniously purified. That’s mean the souls of the not yet ceremoniously cremated deaths, ones without proper funeral ritual, ignored Pitri of those who hasn’t had their Sraddha, Pinda, and Tarpana performed yet, and other ghostly beings. The religious authorities of Balinese Hindu banned any kind of personal religious activity without any connection with the grand Panca Bali ceremony in Besakih, that including funeral ceremony, wedding, etc. With no proper ritual, we expected will be many impure departed souls in Bali. They could bring bad energy and disturb the purity of people’s mind, thus became further disturbance to the great sacrificial ceremony. The village chiefs took the two jars of holy water and ceremoniously placed them in the Death Temples, Lord Siva’s places of worship. He then distributed it among his peoples for sprinkled in their own houses and family shrines. By the first holy water the whole village was purified. By the second one, all wandering souls were sealed by the authority of the Yamaraja, Lord of Death and Cemetery. The villagers then asked the Ancestral Lord, Prajapati, whose shrine was near the cremation ground, to take care the souls of their departed relatives for a while, till the grand ceremony of Panca Bali was completed.