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Klub Kokos |
News - Mass Cremation in Ubud |
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June 2000 NewsletterGallery Progress |
As the program of birth control has been such a success in Bali through its implementation at the village level, over the past two decades the balance of young and old has gradually begun to shift. The various ‘banjar’ (local council/ administrative areas) have generally grown larger in membership, while more and more people in the Ubud area are now involved in office-type jobs, or ones that have a fixed time schedule attached to them. Traditionally, of course, most of the Ubud locals were rice farmers, with very little constraints on the way they spent their time. But nowadays with more people dying and less people to attend to the preparations for their most important ceremony in the series of ceremonies that mark each individual’s cycle of life, it is becoming much more of a burden on families to provide all that is necessary for the deceased’s soul’s final release. Thus many Balinese have nowadays adopted an alternative method to deal with this ceremony – a ‘ngaben masal’, or mass cremation, held once every five Balinese years (a bit less than six calendar years – one Balinese year being two cycles of the Balinese calendar, i.e. 210 days x 2 = 420 days). |
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| The next mass cremation for the group of four ‘banjar’ (Sebale Agung Ubud) that make up the whole of the Ubud-proper area will fall on the 10th July this year. Already families of different people who have died in the past five years have been busily preparing for the event for some months, and since May other members of each of the ‘banjar’ have been involved in community working together – ‘gotong royong’ – to aid in the preparation of the massive amount of offerings involved in such a cremation. There will be over 80 people cremated on this day, 18 of them from the Ubud Kelod (South Ubud) banjar that we are most closely aligned with, Krishna’s ancestral home being at the Puri (Palace) in Ubud. | ||
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If you would like to read a little more about these cremation preparations, please read our page in the Bali Travel Guidebook on Cremations. And if you happen to be in Bali at this time, we hope that you have the opportunity to witness some of the powerful community spirit that goes towards preparing for this ceremony, the most important for all Balinese. [next - more on Galungan] |
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