Manuscripts

Taken from ‘Bungklang Bungkling’, ‘Kropak’, in Bali Post, Sunday, 1st February, 2009,
a column by I Wayan Juniartha
Translated by Putu Semiada

Manuscripts

At this modern tourism era, where can we see the old manuscripts?

Most of the them have been kept safely at the museums overseas. If they were kept at the domestic museums, there would no guarantee that they are safe from termites. Nobody really care. Everybody is busy with themselves. The poor ones are busy working to survive, the ones who think that they are not rich yet are busy with their campaign to be member of House of Representative. The rich ones are busy finding a way to dominate the poor. Nobody really has the time to take care the manuscripts. How are they able to do that while they don’t even know how to speak Balinese properly. They are not familiar again with Balinese words such as pucung (bottle), lumur (glass), cekot (spoon), kenceng (teapot). They are more happy to speak cinetron-style language; nor Indonesian, nor English.

Also, if we put the manuscripts in domestic museums, they may just disappear as it has been known that our culture is when you borrow something you are lazy to return, no matter what kind of purpose of you studying manuscripts.

There are many purpose of a person studying manuscripts. Some want to get ‘moksha’. They might not aware, that this kind of purpose often arise conflicts with others. For example, when one family member disappear (due to accidents, etc) and the body is not found, the family will busy find the body as they are afraid if he/she are victim of mutilation. If the body is still not found, a huge cremation ceremony will be prepared which means that moksha will not be able to achieved but instead the soul will remain at the family as Batara Hyang Guru god and placed at the house shrine.

Some study old manuscripts to obtain divine power. Some want to be able to change himself to be a bird, rangda (female witch), monkey, even to make poison, and for black magic purpose.

In this modern word, where you can find supermarket every where, many television channels, comfortable spring beds, cinetrons from early morning until the next morning, easy to buy something by credit, how can there are still people doing that black magic things.

I think they just want to make others (their own Balinese brothers/sisters) hurt or suffer from that black magic. If so, why don’t they just do this to imperialists (Dutch, Japanese, USA and Chinese investors). Such a silly people!

Today, learning leyak (black magic things) is just wasting your money, and it’s not good for your own health (get fever easily), your hair get dirty and you get rheumatic easily as you have to stand on one leg when you practice it.

Studying about herbal treatment is also the same thing. You study hard about type of plants mentioned in manuscripts. But most of them are already gone as their habitats have been occupied by houses, hotels, Japanese grass, adenium, etc. So, it’s useless.

For those who learn about mantras, you will also do useless things. Bali has full of towers, discotiques and cafes that open until morning. All these have ‘ruined’ the holy vibration from the gods. So it’s getting hard to get pawisik (majesty words from the gods). Even a ‘sign’ from butha kala (ground spirits) is hard to get too. At the end you just follow your own heart, which is often based on anger.

Balinese are too afraid of many things—they are afraid of investors, leyak, balian (fortune teller), butha kala, bhatara (gods) —which make them busy learning divine things from old manuscripts that they have never seen or read before.

Most of manuscripts are already damaged as they are very very old and ruined buy termites, and it makes Balinese read the manuscripts half-hearted. Of course the result would be ‘half’ too.

How would we expect the manuscripts can be researched and re-written if in the reality we find no one really care about them.