Day 58: Canang
It’s impossible to come to Bali and not notice the offerings. They are everywhere: little palm frond trays of flowers and rice in front of doorways or in shrines. Todays offerings mingle in the road with those of days long past; you see them in all stages of weathering. When it rains they wash down the streets like forlorn little boats.
Sometimes more exotic tokens are added to the basic furnishings: cigarettes and little sweets. Or a satay of meat. Cash money. They’re always blessed with a burning stick of incense. Offerings range from the tiny offerings every house and business — every building — has put out in front of it every day to the massive assemblage of items required for larger ceremonies like the 3 month ceremony we witnessed.
How do these offerings get made? For such a commonplace item, we knew nothing of who and how these things are produced. To fill in our gap in Balinese culture and religion Melissa found a local family willing to give us a little class in making offerings.
Our teacher was a lady named Koming. Her daughter Shanti and dog “Doggie” played about as we learned. Koming is the older sister of Ketut, a driver and general fixer for tourists in Ubud. He set it up so she could give us a lesson in offerings at their family compound. After the lesson he gave us bonus instruction on religion and culture of Bali.
We arrived eager to learn despite having a rough time finding the place in the rain. After the obligatory coffee and snacks, Koming got down to her lesson. We started with little ceremonies, or canang (although it’s still hard to remember, all the ‘c’s in Indonesian get pronounced as ‘ch’, so think chanang and Kachang).
Canang
The first thing to realize is that the Balinese Hindus will perform ceremonies at all sorts of different temples depending upon the occasion. Each compound will have its own family temple where offerings are made daily. So-called little ceremonies. There will then be three local temples in each village and a series of big mother temples throughout the land. Each will host specific kinds of ceremonies.
Offerings are made at all these temples, so offerings are produced in vast quantities every day. You can buy them or you can makes them.
Starting with the trays upon which the items are offered there’re rules to be followed and a chance to show your personal artistry. We were shown how to construct three different kinds: the simple rectangles canang chapair, the circular offering sim canang, the triangular shape and the special-occasion spiral flower shape. The lessons are shows in the photo essay at the bottom of this post.
And when I say “construct” I mean it in the loosest sense. In the same sense a pre-fab house is “constructed” on site. Our teacher, Koming, did all the intricate cutting needed to turn the simple palm leaves into built-it-yourself offerings.
Even so it was a a challenge. The cut-out bamboo leaves didn’t just snap together, they needed to be sewn. Sewn with thin slivers of bamboo. This is a difficult process: you can’t bend the bamboo too much or it’ll snap. If you don’t puncture the leaf with the bamboo correctly, it’ll snap or the leaf will tear. And too much mangling of the leaf will render it unable to hold its shape even if you do get your suture in. All this is why you see a good proportion of the offerings around using staples to join the pieces together.
Like the real things we produced offerings at scale, making two of each. This took us amateurs the better part of two hours. It gives some insight into Koming’s life: she makes 35 offerings a day for her extended family.
Corsage
The next step after building the trays is to fill them. A proper Balinese Hindu offering is very sensitive to compass direction, with specifically-colored flowers at each of the four cardinal directions and a symbol of the trimurti in the center. The trimurti symbol is a V of palm leaves meant to represent the actual Trimurti of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva 1. It was required to point north.
We were given the following rules for an offering:
- Trimuti symbol in the center, oriented north
- Red flowers on the bottom, south
- Purple flowers (a stand in for the color black), north
- White flowers (cambuga or frangipani, with its yellow center but white leaves), east
- Yellow flowers (marigold), west
- Green, lichen-like herb in the middle.
Compound Lesson
After we finished out offerings, Ketut returned to give us some explanation concerning the organization of a Balinese compound.
As he relates it, there are three sizes of Balinese compound. The smallest are 600 m^2, the next is 1000 m^2 for a middle-sized compound like the one Ketut’s family inhabits. The largest size is 3000 m^2, suitable for royalty.
As with offerings, in Balinese architecture the compass is critical. The temple is always in the northeastern corner of the compound. Next to it, in the northern part of the compound, the highest building is built for the oldest and most revered members of the family to sleep in.
In the east of the compounds, the buildings are multi-function, people congregate there to sleep, to hang out, to gather for human ceremonies. Human ceremonies are those marking the passage of people through their lives, such as the three month ceremony we witnessed, the tooth filing ceremony where a priest files down your top front 6 teeth to get rid of the 6 enemies or (passions) within yourself, and many others.
The southern end of the compound is reserved for the kitchen, considered the least clean part of the compound so it’s farthest away from the temple. Less clean even than the toilets? Technically so: toilets are outside the compound. This is intended to cause people to have to do a small check of the permitter of the compound after dark we’re told.
The most surprising fact that Ketut mentioned was that a Balinese family doesn’t eat together. Everyone eats when they wish, where they wish. I suppose there’s less of a worry about ‘family time’ when you all live and work in the same compound all day long and there aren’t a lot of rooms with four walls around them.
The final architectural detail Ketut discussed was the presence of a statue just inside the entrance. This is so that enemies — spiritual or physical — cannot come in directly, and so that luck cannot flow easily out. Ketut’s compound’s statue was of an auspicious Genesha.
Daily Life
This whole day was a fascinating window into a very complicated culture.
You cannot but help notice all these offerings. Tug on that string: why are they here? Who makes them and why? And you learn about a very different set of priorities for the people here. The central role of religion in their daily lives, not just through prayer but by making real objects to exacting specifications. Making those offerings not just on special occasions, but every single day to keep things running smoothly.
Likewise the family compounds don’t look like our homes do. Their design as a compound of half-walled buildings is a function of the benign climate where the main advantage of a building is to keep the rain from falling on your head and from seeping up from the muddy ground rather than protection from the cold. Walls are much less important than roofs. But within that outline, they’re also a reflection of religious beliefs; architecture dictated by spiritual views.
Here in Bali, the religion and culture are woven into the objects which are part of everyone’s life and lifestyle. All these obvious physical difference make this place feel wonderfully different and special.
Offering Construction Lesson Photo Essay
Our Square Canang Side Walls
About 20 minutes of work for the two of us to produce these square walls for the rectangular canang. That’s without cutting out the leaf, but at least they were sewn and not stapled.
Diligent Melissa Completes her First Tray
See the concentration as Melissa makes the walls of her first offering tray.
The Floor of the Square Canang
Sew these two together with bamboo to get a floor for the square of canang.
The Complicated Cuts Needed for The Offerings
The delicate cuts required to make the circular offerings, dozens of these are twisted together to get the final offering tray.
Koming Shows us the Beginning of the Circular Offering
These are offerings for special occasions. They take a lot more effort to make, but are much more impressive.
Building the Circular Offering
My hands sew together a circular offering.
Koming Shows us the Most Impressive Offering
Like a pinwheel, this largest circular offering take a lot of precise cutting and bending to make. It keeps falling apart in your hands as you try to get it to come together.
Koming Demonstrates Praying with the Trimurti
When an offering is made, you don’t just light the incense and leave willy-nilly. You need to pray that the offering will be accepted.
Shanti Helps out with the Cleanup
Shanti has been helping out throughout the lesson, both with making the offerings and with keeping the dog Doggie away.