Bring out your dead....Bali Style

Bring out your dead was a line used in the Monty Python Film "The Holy Grail" however, it probably means something completely different in Bali!

There are few things that can be considered normal by westerners when discussing Bali, however, things get a little stranger when there is a funeral. A few weeks ago hundreds of thousands of people gathered in Ubud to participate in the cremation of two Balinese royals.

Here’s what the Indonesian News Agency Antara had to report…..

Ubud royal family head Tjokorda Gde Agung Suyasa, who died in March after a long illness, and lesser royal Tjokorda Gde Raka who also died in March, were cremated on a massive hand-crafted pyre representing the universe.



The hill town of Ubud, the cultural capital of mainly Hindu Bali, came to life before dawn with women wearing sarongs and traditional blouses carrying offerings of fruit on their heads to the royal palace.



Neighbourhood chiefs exhorted people over loudspeakers to wake up and get ready for the service, as men gathered at the palace to carry the huge pyre that will be paraded through town around midday.

"Each person has their job. For me, it's making coffee for people coming in. For the men, it's making the cremation towers," domestic worker Ni Made Rinun told AFP.

"Everyone works, no one is lazy," she added.

For months, the bodies of the dead royals have been waited on by relatives with offerings of food and coffee in bedrooms of the palace.


Most revered royal family

The royal family of Ubud, a hillside town famous as the heartland of traditional Balinese arts, is one of the most revered royal families on the island.

It is descended from royalty from the neighbouring island of Java who fled the fall of the Hindu Majapahit Empire in the 15th century.

At the start of the funeral procession, the bodies will be brought from the main temple where they have been lying in state since Saturday.



The bodies of 68 commoners, many also dead for months, were dug out of graves on the weekend and cremated in preparation to be included in the procession.

The royal remains will be loaded via bamboo and wood gangways into colourful papier-mâché towers called bade. The multi-tiered, demon-covered towers symbolise the three levels of the Balinese Hindu universe.

More than 200 men in traditional dress will heave each tower -- the tallest of which is 28 meters (92 feet) high -- onto their shoulders with bamboo slats, spinning the structures around to ensure the spirits of the dead are too disoriented to return home.



Also winding through the streets will be the Naga Banda, a seven-metre long "dragon" reserved for the highest royals and symbolising the wisdom of the royal family.

Lying symbolically between heaven and earth in the bade, the royals are paraded to the sound of traditional gamelan orchestras, a percussion instrument resembling a cross between a xylophone and a bell.



Then they are loaded into sarcophagi representing black bulls bedecked with gold foil, which are then wrapped in the Naga Banda.

The priest pours holy water on the bulls before they and the towers are set alight. Finally, the ashes are taken to Bali's eastern Sanur beach to be cast into the sea.

The cremation is intended to return the body to the fundamental elements of fire, air, water, earth and void. Smaller ceremonies then release the soul to reach oneness with God before, after a time, it is reincarnated.



"(The soul) doesn't stay in the body, it's probably around the body," explained Tjokorda Dge Raka Kerthyasa, the successor as Ubud's royal head.

"The process of cremation separates the attachment of the soul to the physical being, the world. I think... I haven't died yet so I don't know."

Tjokorda Raka Swastika, nephew of the late Ubud royal family head, said "only the blue bloods" were honoured with a cremation featuring the Naga Banda.

"(The family) is not only respected in Bali, we are related to the royal families in Java, South Sumatra, all over Indonesia ... Our family is respected by great people all over the world," he said.

Now, I don’t now about you, but the concept off exhuming 68 corpses, cremating them and then using them in the procession is just a bit weird, but, you cannot deny it, Bali is definitely “something else.!