THE TOOTH-FILING CEREMONY or WHY WE LIVE IN BALI

GAMELAN ORCHESTRA

THOSE ABOUT TO GET TOOTH FILING

WARNING: This blog contains very little copy, but many pictures. 

BAMBOO CARVING

BAMBOO & FOOD CARVING

TOOTH FILING

TOOTH FILING

FILING

The tooth filing ceremony is usually done when one becomes a teenager, unless the family cannot afford the cost. When that is the case, the ceremony is put off until the family has enough money, but it must be done 
                                              before the person is cremated.

GRANDPA GET HIS TOOTH FILED

MORE FILING

So, what happened recently, in a family compound in our village, was a case of a family having enough money to pull of a big ceremony celebrating many events including tooth filings for every member of the family who has never gone through it. When a family has a ceremony everyone is invited and if the ceremony is large enough there is gamelan music, puppet shows, food and traditional Balinese dancing. The canine teeth are filed, more ceremonially than otherwise, in order to rid one of animal instincts.                                                    

GIRLS WAITING FOR CEREMONY

GRILLING SATAY

CEREMONIAL DANCE

This small island, set amongst the huge archipelago of Indonesia and atop the largest volcano and earthquake field in the world, has a religion and traditions like no other place in the world. 

We are constantly surprised by a procession of villagers dressed in their finery walking through a village on the way to a ceremony; or a cremation procession with a huge black bull carrying a corpse on the way to the burning of the body; or we may just be driving past a temple where a ceremony is taking place. 

With the thousands of temples on the island--each family compound has one, as does ever community, village, city, region and state--there are ceremonies for every occasion one can imagine plus many for
reasons one cannot imagine. There are ceremonies for 6 month occasions, and some for 1 year, 5 year 10 year, 30 year, and so on. Then there are the Balinese holidays which require more ceremonies.

The Balinese also put little offerings out in front of and around their homes and businesses every day of the year. So you can see how much time and money is spent on their religious practices, as these events are time-consuming and expensive, what with making elaborate decorations and preparing offerings of food and flowers. These preparations usually take many days with both the men and women involved.

CEREMONIAL DANCE

 A great deal has been written about the melding of Hinduism, Buddhism and Animism that exists only here, in Bali, a small island (pop 3.5 million) in Indonesia, a country of 17,000 islands, and, with 238 million people, the largest Muslim population in the world. There is a lot of focus on the island now, what with the constant rise of tourism, but there is also much poverty and superstition that needs to be addressed here.

WALKING WITH THE EVIL BARONG

LIKE CHILDREN EVERYWHERE

What I have written here is but a taste of the complex nature of the rituals here, and I am ill-equipped to get much further into them, although I am learning more all the time.

The pictures on this page are from a few recent ceremonies, not only from the tooth filing. 

PRIEST CHANTING

THE BACKUP SINGERS

MORE GAMELAN