Sanda Temple Ceremonies – Bali

April was a busy month in Sanda, Pupuan, the village we nowadays call home. There were 2 related major ceremonies, which had not been held for about 13 years: Ngelemiji and Ngusaba Tengelot. We were privileged to attend these ceremonies, together with almost the entire population of the village.

Sanda is a very old village, and some rituals date back to pre-hindu times. That includes the traditional hunt for wild deer, which is an integral part of the Ngusaba Tengelot ceremony. For the ceremony to be successful a wild deer needs to be caught and sacrificed. The traditional hunt, called meboros, took place over 2 days, in the rain forest on the slope of Mount Batukaru, a holy mountain for the village here.

The main rituals and ceremonies were help in the Pura Tri Kayangan village temple. In almost all Balinese villages there are 3 main temples, each dedicated to one of the 3 gods, the Dewa Tri Murti: the Pura Desa (or Pura Agung, home to Brahma), Pura Puseh (home to Wisnu) and Pura Dalem (home to Siwa), the village of Sanda has only 1 main temple, which combines the functions of the 3 main temples in other villages: the Pura Tri Kayangan temple.

Highlights of the ceremonies included a ritual cleansing of the holy attributes of the temple, the teenage boys and girls of the village dancing the sacred Rejang and the many village elders who got possessed by ancestral and godly spirits: kerauhan.