Abstract
This chapter investigates both how the Balinese educated elites construed their ‘religion’ as ‘Hinduism’ (agama Hindu) and what resulted from their endeavor. It first analyzes how the Sanskrit loanword agama came to designate in Indonesia a peculiar combination of a Christian view of what counts as a world religion with an Islamic understanding of what defines a proper religion: a prophet, a holy book and a belief in the one and only God. It then focuses attention on the controversy which has divided the Balinese intelligentsia over the proper name of their religion, revealing a perennial conflict between Balinese who want to retain their local traditions and those who aspire to reform them according to what they assume Hinduism—as a ‘world religion’—is about.
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- 1.
Inasmuch as the Indonesian notion of agama is congruent with the Islamic acceptation of ‘religion’, it is commonly equated with the Arabic word dīn as used in the Quran. In this respect, it is important to note that, before being glossed as ‘religion’, the word dīn—which signifies ‘practice, custom, law’—referred to ‘the body of obligatory prescriptions to which one must submit’, according to the Encyclopaedia of Islam.
- 2.
This is how Gonda accounts for the appropriation of agama in the Archipelago: ‘In Sanskrit āgama, apart from other use, designates “a traditional precept, doctrine, body of precepts, collection of such doctrines”; in short, “anything handed down as fixed by tradition”; it is, moreover, the name of a class of works inculcating the so-called tantric worship of Śiva and Śakti. In Old Javanese it could apply to a body of customary law or a Dharma-book, and to religious or moral traditions, and the words sang hyang “the divine, holy” often preceding it emphasize its superhuman character. The term is, moreover, used to signify the religious knowledge of a brahman […], and also that of a high Buddhist functionary. Islam, in the spread of which many compatriots of Shivaists and Buddhists who had led the way into the Archipelago took an important part, adopted the term, and so did, in the course of time, Christianity. Nowadays agama […] is in Javanese, Malay etc. “religion”’ (Gonda 1973: 499–500).
- 3.
Śaiva-Siddhānta, ‘the final truth of Shiva’, is the most important of all the Shaiva schools, predominantly in Tamil Nadu. The primary sources of Śaiva-Siddhānta are the 28 Śaivāgama, a body of Sanskrit texts that are treated as authoritative because they claim to have been revealed by Shiva to his śakti Parvati. They usually consist of four parts: theology (jñana), concentration (yoga), ritual (kriya) and rules (carya). On Śaiva-Siddhānta and the Śaivāgama, see Davis (1991).
- 4.
- 5.
The Dharmaśāstra are ancient Sanskrit treatises on the subject of dharma. See the introduction to this volume for the meaning and scope of dharma.
- 6.
Nītiśāstra refers to a class of didactic texts on political ethics.
- 7.
This is not unlike what happened in nineteenth-century colonial India where, once the word dharma had acquired the sense of ‘religion’, there was a convergence between dharma and dīn as two distinct embodiments of that same category (Pernau 2011: 37).
- 8.
See the introduction to this volume for an outline of the process through which the concept of dharma became fragmented in colonial India.
- 9.
Here again, one notices a certain similarity with the situation prevailing in nineteenth-century India, where Hindu reformers disparaged ācāra, the customary rules of conduct governing the correct performance of social and ritual duties constitutive of the varnāśramadharma, that are thus endorsed by the Dharmaśāstra but which they claimed was not part of true Hinduism. On this question, see the introduction to this volume.
- 10.
On the other hand, the Balinese religious scholar Sri Reshi Anandakusuma translated agama as dharma in his Indonesian–Balinese dictionary (Anandakusuma 1986: 234).
- 11.
- 12.
Pedanda are the literate and initiated high priests, originating from Majapahit , whose position is the exclusive prerogative of the brahmana. Their role was initially similar to that of court Indian and Javanese Brahmans (purohita). Today their main function is to prepare the holy water (tirtha) that plays a major role in Balinese rites. There exist two categories of pedanda, the pedanda Siwa and the pedanda Buda, whose differences reside mostly in ritual paraphernalia and divinities invoked in their mantra—and who are, in any case, both considered ‘Hindu’ at present. According to the nature of the rites over which they officiate, they can be either interchangeable or complementary.
- 13.
Literally, the ‘language of poets’, that is, the language of religion and scholarship in Bali, which encompasses a variety of interrelated language registers, including Old Javanese, Middle Javanese and various forms of literary Balinese.
- 14.
‘[…] it is necessary that all Kawi and other manuscripts which can be heard of should be collected, because these are of the utmost importance for the illustration of the social and religious condition not alone of Bali itself, but also of the still more important ancient Java’ (Van Hoëvell 1848: 154).
- 15.
There is no entry for adat either nor for hukum.
- 16.
On the other hand, in Bhāwanāgara, the journal published by the Kirtya from 1931 to 1935, we find both meanings of the term agama, the legal one as well as the religious one; the latter is glossed as Kesewasogatan, from Sewa, Siwa’s devotees and Sogata, Buddha’s disciples, in reference to the two categories of brahmana priests, the pedanda Siwa and the pedanda Buda.
- 17.
The Malay word bangsa, derived from the Sanskrit vamśa meaning ‘lineage’, conveys the idea of a people sharing a common ethnic origin and similar customs.
- 18.
The Balinese nobility is composed of the triwangsa (literally, the ‘three peoples’: brahmana, satria and wesia), as opposed to the jaba (literally the ‘outsiders’, that is, those who are outside the sphere of the courts), who make up the bulk of the population. According to their myth of origin, the triwangsa claim to be the descendants of the Javanese conquerors from the kingdom of Majapahit who subjugated the island of Bali in the fourteenth century.
- 19.
Margaret Wiener substantiates this assertion in a most convincing manner: ‘Balinese praxis and discourse blur the lines between sacred and secular, for almost everything Balinese do involves seeking the aid of auspicious forces or asking for protection against inauspicious ones. In precolonial Bali there was no clear demarcated domain of action that could be termed “religion”, since all power was understood to derive from relationships to invisible forces’ (Wiener 1995: 73–74).
- 20.
Agama Tirtha refers to the holy water required for most religious rites. Agama Siwa and agama Buda pertain to the two categories of initiated brahmana priests—the pedanda Siwa and the pedanda Buda—while agama Siwa-Buda points more specifically to the Tantric fusion of Shaivism and Buddhism that originated in East Java in the thirteenth century. The name agama Trimurti designates the Hindu triad Brahma, Wisnu and Iswara. Finally, one finds agama Bali Hindu, agama Hindu Bali and agama Hindu. In this respect, one should be aware that it is only through the work of Dutch Orientalists that educated Balinese elites became acquainted with the word ‘Hindu’ in the early twentieth century.
- 21.
The following quotation neatly epitomizes the Balinese defensiveness: ‘Before the boys and girls of Bali started going to school, and before there were any newspapers on the island, the Balinese were already practicing this religion (agama), and there was no one who criticized and blamed them; what we heard were only comments like “the custom (adat) in this village is like this, whereas in that village it is like that” […] Furthermore, one did not speak of religious ceremonies (upacara agama), but rather of village customs (adat desa). Thus, in short, a proper religion (agama yang sebenarnya) was something unknown; what we knew about were only village customs (adat desa) and Balinese religion (agama Bali), and one did not hear of people who felt ashamed or angry because they had been criticized by Mister… so and so’ (Goebah 1937: 131).
- 22.
Although they had no lack of names to refer to their supreme deity, the Balinese appeared to have concurred rather easily on the name Sang Hyang Widhi, popularized in the 1920s as an equivalent to the Malay word Tuhan, meaning ‘Lord’, and chosen by Christian missionaries in the 1930s as the Balinese ‘one God’. They had more trouble agreeing on their holy book, wavering between the Mahabharata and the Veda, the latter of which were ultimately retained—despite the fact that the Veda were not known in Bali before the twentieth century. As for their prophet, after some attempt to choose Bagawan Biasa—the mythical compiler of the Veda and the Mahabharata—Balinese reformers appear to have thought that Hinduism neither had a prophet nor needed one.
- 23.
One notices that instead of the word agama, rejected on account of its Islamic connotation, it is the word dharma which was retained by former Balinese students from Indian universities, to convey the normative idea of ‘religion’.
- 24.
Penetapan Presiden n° 1/1965 tentang Pencegahan Penyalahgunaan dan/atau Penodaan Agama.
- 25.
See the chapter by Cécile Barraud for an illustration of the ambiguities surrounding the ‘conversion’ of an ethnic minority to agama Hindu and the difficulty in differentiating it from their own adat.
- 26.
It is rather difficult to know with any precision the number of adherents to agama Hindu in Indonesia, inasmuch as the religious composition of the population is a politically contentious matter. According to the 2010 census, there are around 4 million Hindus in Indonesia, a figure disputed by the Directorate of Hinduism at the Ministry of Religion, which puts the number at roughly 10 million, while the Parisada claims that they are 18 million. According to the census, Hindus composed 1.69% of the Indonesian population and 83.5% of the population of Bali. In the opinion of most Balinese religious leaders, the proportion of Hindus is deliberately underestimated at the national level, whereas it is overestimated for Bali so as to prevent the Balinese people from knowing the true weight of the Muslim population on their island.
- 27.
The question of priesthood in Bali is complex, all the more so because it is controversial, due to its link to the hierarchy of the title groups. One can distinguish two categories of priests, according to the conditions on their access. The first one—the pinandita, according to the Parisada’s terminology—which requires only a purification ceremony (pawintenan), is comprised mostly of priests attached to the service of a particular temple (pemangku), specific classes of puppeteers (mangku dalang), as well as mediums and healers (balian). The second category—called pandita by the Parisada—which is reserved to those who undergo an initiation (padiksan) and are authorized by the Parisada, is monopolized by brahmana priests (pedanda). It is precisely this privilege that was challenged by the warga, whose leaders attempted to impose the use of their own priests—bhujangga, resi, bhagawan, empu and dukuh—next to that of the pedanda.
- 28.
On pilgrimages to India, see Annette Hornbacher’s chapter.
- 29.
The motto ‘Back to Veda’ is based on the presupposition that the Veda had been transmitted to Bali, where they fell into disuse, like in India. This illusion, long held by Orientalists, goes back to the report published by Friederich (1849–1850). Had he been allowed to examine the manuscripts that the pedanda called Weda, Friederich would have discovered that these were not the Indian Veda, but were for the most part prescriptions for rituals, interspersed with mantra and hymns. In the Balinese language, the word Weda refers to liturgical manuscripts composed of ritual prescriptions (Kalpasastra), Mantra and hymns (Stuti and Stawa), used by the pedanda during their office (maweda) (Goudriaan 1970).
- 30.
See Annette Hornbacher’s chapter.
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Picard, M. (2017). Balinese Religion in the Making: An Enquiry About the Interpretation of Agama Hindu as ‘Hinduism’. In: Picard, M. (eds) The Appropriation of Religion in Southeast Asia and Beyond. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56230-8_5
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