the journal of hindu studies volume issue 2014 [doi 10.1093%2fjhs%2fhiu020] acri, a. -- pancakuÂ...

8/9/2019 The Journal of Hindu Studies Volume Issue 2014 [Doi 10.1093%2Fjhs%2Fhiu020] Acri, A. -- Pancaku Ika and Kanda Mpat- From a P Upata Myth to Balin

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Pancakusika and Kanda Mpat: From a P@supata

Myth to Balinese FolkloreAndrea Acri*

Nalanda-Sriwijaya Centre, ISEAS*Corresponding author: [email protected]

Abstract: In this article, I aim at historicising, through a text-historical method,

Balinese discourses on the kanda mpat, the four mystical siblings that arebelieved to accompany each human being at birth and throughout his life. Itrace the origin of this important cultural theme back to the master-narrativeof the pancakusika or pancarXi, a localised version of an in origin SaivaP@supata foundational myth, which was transformed and adapted in Java bythe 9th century AD, and further localised on Bali. In so doing, I intend toemphasise the Sanskritic roots of what has been described by anthropologistsas an uniquely Balineseor in any event Western Austronesianmanifestationof orthopraxis, magic, and everyday popular religiosity, but which in fact stems

from a sophisticated, and trans-regional, tradition of Saiva speculations, be-liefs, and related ritual practices. As discourses on the kanda mpat/panca-kusika are anchored in, and therefore constitute an interface between, bothtext and practice, they provide an opportunity for trying to bridge thehitherto seemingly insurmountable gap existing between text-focused/dia-chronic and practice-focused/synchronic disciplines in the study of Balineseculture and religion.

Are the xx century and tourism changing everything in Bali? As a response to hisprovocativeas much as rhetoricalquestion, philologist Christiaan Hooykaas inhisReligion of Bali (1973, p. 3) remarks:

For an adequate answer a depth of knowledge and a geographical and historicalextent of experience is necessary, combined with a courage for prophesyingwhich is nowhere to be found. But it is possible to deal with an example of anold belief which proves to be neither discarded nor doubted or intentionallyignored in the present. It should serve as an example, a to the world outsideperhaps unexpected theme of belief that is quietly maintaining itself.

The example referred to by Hooykaas to perorate the existence of an elementof continuity in contemporary Balinese religion is the widespread Balinese

The Author 2014. Oxford University Press and The Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. All rights reserved.For permissions, please email [email protected]

The Journal of Hindu Studies 2014;133 doi:10.1093/jhs/hiu020

The Journal of Hindu Studies Advance Access published June 20, 2014

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discourse on thekanda mpat(or kanda empat/pat),1 the four mystical siblings thataccompany each human baby at birthin form of the amniotic fluid, blood, thevernix caseosa, and the placentaand throughout his life until, and even after,

death.Speculations, imageries, and practices around the kanda mpat have been

transmitted on Bali not only through oral folk- and ritual-lore, but especiallythrough a conspicuous body of texts of varying date of composition (pre- andpost-colonial), supports (lontars, mimeographed stencils, printed pamphlets, andbooks), and genres (religious, magical, medical, or ritual). This being the case,anthropologists and philologists alike have long since acknowledged the import-ance of thekanda mpatin the cultural, religious, and social life of past and presentBali.

In this contribution, I am neither concerned with discussing in detail thefeatures of the kanda mpatand the related pancakusika, nor with presenting newmaterial on them,2 be it gathered from Balinese relevant texts or field ob-servations. Limiting myself to use the empirical data already presented byanthropologists, and drawing from Hooykaas seminal philological workCosmogony and Creation (1974), I rather aim at putting Balinese discourses aroundthekanda mpatinto historical perspective, mainly by tracing their origins back tothe pan-Nusantarian theme of thepancakusika, which itself constitutes a localisa-tion of an in origin South Asian Sanskritic P@supata Saiva myth. In so doing, I aim

at highlighting the Sanskritic roots of what has been described by anthropologistsas an uniquely Balineseor in any event Western Austronesianmanifestation oforthopraxis and everyday popular worship, but which in fact stems from a sophis-ticated, and trans-local, tradition of Indo-Javano-Balinese key speculations, beliefs,and related ritual practices.

Insofar as the motif of the kanda mpatstands at the interface between perform-ance and textthe former intended as practice (ritual or otherwise) enacted inpopular, living, and everyday-life milieux, the latter as an abstract, prescrip-tive, and intellectual tradition transmitted from the past through elite milieuxit

constitutes a case study that may be instrumental in trying to bridge the seem-ingly insurmountable gap between text-focused/diachronic and practice-focused/synchronic disciplines that has so far characterised, and indeed hampered, thestudy of Balinese culture and religion.

Kanda Mpat: between text and reality

An effective and synthetic introduction to the kanda mpat-lore on Bali is thatprovided by Hooykaas (1973, p. 3):

A Balinese dislikes being alone, either by day or by night. But then, he is not, forhe is constantly accompanied by his four elder brothers when he is a male, fourelder sisters in the case of a female [. . .]. They accompany him/her from shortly

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after conception till after cremation, actually till the final act of deliverance ofthe soul. They are the personified concomitants of his birth: the amniotic fluid,the blood, the vernix caseosa and the after birth. It is not well possible to

preserve the first three, but the afterbirth is tangible enough. Shortly afterbirth it is buried outside the main entrance to the sleeping house. Afather leaving the door has it buried to the right in the case of a malechild whereas the left side is given to the females. A river stone of betweenten to twenty kilogram covers this spot. Finally a fragment of the umbilicalcord is preserved as an amulet, kept in a silver box, hung around the childsneck.

Hooykaas goes on to list a series of actions and offerings to pay respect to thekanda mpatobserved by young Balinese mothers on the occasion of breastfeedingtheir baby,3 parents on the occasion of the rites of passage of their child,4 teenageboys and girls before their meals,5 Brahman priests before going to sleep, andofficiants of funerary rituals6all being quite common events in the landscape ofBalis everyday life.

On the island, Hooykaas notes (1973, p. 4), virtually nobody is ignorant about thekanda mpats proper names: Anggapati, Mrajapati, Banaspati, and Banaspati Raja(cf.Fig. 1); further, most Balinese are aware of the alternative names by which thefour are also known, for example, during the stage of the fetal development of thebaby. Stephen (2005, p. 37) points out that the kanda mpatare often collectivelyreferred to by ordinary people as catur s@nak(Old Javanese, the four siblings) orsimply nyama (Balinese) siblings. Insofar as they provide, the link between themicro- and macrocosmos, man and God, natural and psycho-physical elements andtheir corresponding supra-mundane realities, they constitute a key element inframing the identity of individuals on a spiritual or subtle level (suksma, niskala),in the tangible world (sthula,sakala), and in human society. In harmony with thisBalinesein fact (also) Sanskriticconception of a multi-layered reality, thekandampatintervene in all the three levels or worldsthe elemental (bhuta) or lowest(nistha), the human (manusa) or middle (madhya), and the divine (dewa) or highest

(utama)that frame everything which exists, both in the outward and physicaluniverse as well as in the internal subtle universe, which is the realm of potenti-alities and powerful forces.7

Thekanda mpatare known under different names/manifestations according tothe level they are connected to. At the elemental level, they form the series be-ginning with Anggapati, etc.; at themanusalevel, they assume various (subsidiary)sets of names according to the respective the life stages of the individual8; atthe dewa level, they embody various series of divine figures, viz. the first fourcharacters of the pentad known as pancakusika or pancarXi (Five Kusikas or Five

Sages)Kusika, Garga, Metri, and KuruXya, on whom I will elaborate infraas wellas the series of four Brahmanical deities of the main cardinal directions (CaturLokap@la), viz. `svara (E), Brahm@ (S), Mah@deva (W), and ViX>u (N). In their

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pentadic form, the fifth, central and most important element is constitutedby the individual Self, also called Lega Prana, ManuXa J@ti or ManuXa Sakti(bhuta and manusa), the OXi P@tanjala/PrQtanjala, and/or the paramount LordSiva (dewa).

Another common classification of thekanda mpatencompasses four (or, rather,one plus three) levels, namely rare,bhuta,sari, anddewa.9 At the rare (child) level,from which the other three are regarded to come, the kanda mpatare connected

Fig. 1: Kanda Mpat, painting by Mangku Muriati, 2009 (Photo Emma Furno, the AustralianMuseum).



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with gestation, embryology, and everything that concerns the baby prior to andimmediately after his birth. At thebhutalevel, thekanda mpatare connected withthe physical elements, human physiology, mundane activities, and death; they also

intervene in the domain of rites de passage, ceremonies, offerings, and cremation.At thesari(essence or refined) level, they are connected to the intellectual andpsychical growth of the individual. At the dewa level, they govern subtle realitiesand mystical matters, such as various forms of meditation and yoga. These levelswould seem to constitute a hierarchy, being understood as the gradual develop-ment or refinement of the individual from the coarse to the subtle stages, andculminating in the dewalevel, in which the realisation of the Selfs identity withthe Supreme Reality, i.e. Siva in His highest form (Paramasiva), is ideally supposedto occur.

At thebhutalevel, thekanda mpatare instrumental in fulfilling the individual-istic purposes that govern the dynamics of popular religiosityintended as aconstellation of magico-ritual practices aiming at propitiating benign beings,and ward-off evils caused by evil beings. Thekanda mpatare universally regardedto be benevolent toward their younger sibling only if they are given proper food(offerings) and reverential thoughts; if neglected, the will refrain from helping himin difficult situation, or even become evil beings who bring him misfortunes, oragain torture him in hell after his death, in the guise of Yamas demonic servants. 10

Since bhuta in Balinese also means demon or demonic, this level is also con-

nected with witchcraft, quest for supernatural faculties, black-magic (or left-handed, pengiwa) practices, and dark forces.11 The place where offerings aregiven to thekanda mpatis shared with evil bhutaandkala; and it is only throughblack magic that one can see his kanda mpat.

Special categories of persons dealing with either natural or supernatural forces,such as all classes of priests and ritual actors, and even performers such as dalangs,who are prone to all sorts of dangers during their shows, are conversant withkanda mpat-lore. Because of their ambivalent and powerful character, they form atabu topic, at least among the people who claim to be in some way connected with

them; these individuals are generally hesitant to openly mention the names of thekanda mpator talk about the details of their relationship with the siblings in theirpersonal life.12 A category of people particularly linked with practices relating tothekanda mpatare thebalians or traditional healers,13 who employ their magicalskills to cure illnesses of children, as well as of adults. This level of discourse on thekanda mpatis by no means relegated to a dead past but enjoys a great popularity incontemporary Bali.14 Hooykaas would be pleased to know that, as noted by Parker(2003, p. 196),

Unexpectedly, the key Balinese ritual of childbirth survived the move awayfrom home towards hospital and hygienic rationality. The contents of thebucket under the bedthe embodiedkanda mpatwere still carefully wrappedand tended, taken home and buried with due ceremony. It might seem a small

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point, but given the dogged fight of the Balinese to keep their religion and tohave it registered as one of the five acknowledged religions (agama) inIndonesia, the respect allowed the kanda mpatis significant. [. . .] Perhaps the

special place occupied by Balinese culture within Indonesia combined with acontinuing, if unofficial, pan-Indonesian belief in a host of spirits and jinns.[. . .] [T]he power of thekanda mpat, the Four Siblings that accompany each babyfrom birth, and the anti-modernist and anti-rationalist beliefs in sorcery andwitchcraft maintain a premodern domain to which modern Western biomedi-cine has no access.

Analogous practices are referred to by Hobart et al. (1996, p. 113). Apart from thebio-medical domain, beliefs, and practices around thekanda mpatform an import-ant part of the discourses current in contemporary Balinese paranormal and mys-tical milieux, where the ability to contact the kanda mpat acquired by thepractitioners serves the purpose of controlling the elements, thereby gainingsupernatural powers.15 At thebhutalevel, the internal subtle realities and powerfulinvisible forces at play are submitted to ones will through meditation and visu-alisation of thekanda mpat, muttering of special mantras, and enactment of otherinternalised psycho-physical techniques. When, however, these practices are notdirected to the obtainment of mundane powers but rather understood as means toachieve liberation (moksa), they are regarded as belonging to thedewalevel. At thislevel, thekanda mpatare connected, and in fact identified, with the Saiva mystical

syllablessa ba ta a i, which constitute the initials of the five aspects or faces ofSad@sivas mantric body,16 and which often occur in the ritual or yogic reenact-ment of the micro-macrocosmic process of expansion and resorption constitutingthe Balinese (in origin Saiva) dynamic universe (cf. Stephen 2005, pp. 107, 130).

The ethnographic data reported above leave little to doubt that discourses,narratives and practices on the kanda mpat, whether bookish or not, constitutean integral part of many constitutive aspects of life in past and present Bali, beinglinked to a constellation of representations, beliefs, rituals, folk, and magical prac-tices. These domains, one would expect, constitute the anthropologists elective

fields of investigation. Yet, as noted by Ottino (2000, p. 129), who devoted to thekanda mpatthe greatest part of Chapter three (pp. 127162) of her anthropologicalmonograph,

no dimension of Balinese culture has been subjected to greater indifference onthe part of Western scholarship than the kanda mpat. [. . .] Dismissed as meresuperstitions, left-over from ancient beliefs no longer relevant to a worldwithout magical practices, the kanda mpatnevertheless reflect an interestingsynchretisation [sic] of Taoist, Hinduist and Buddhist doctrines about theperson.

In spite of the questionableand nowhere explained or justifiedview that thekanda mpat would reflect a syncretisation of Taoist (sic), Hindu, and Buddhist



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doctrines, Ottino is right in lamenting the lack of interest in thekanda mpatmani-fested by scholars of Bali, and in particular by anthropologists.17 According to her(2000, p. 129), this state of affairs is due to the fact that most of what is known about

thekanda mpatoriginates from the Old Javanese texts presented by Hooykaas in hisphilological work; in contrast, the material presented in her study

was obtained from specific persons, men from Munduk, mostly ritual experts,because they are the ones who have the most extensive dealing with them. Itreflects their understanding of the role of the four siblings in their lives, and isbound to differ somewhat from the accounts available in the philological lit-erature, or from the cheap roneotyped brochures found in bookshops.

A hiatus between texts and everyday life appears to be reflected in Ottinos ap-preciation of the two aspects as differing somewhat. She continues:

Yet the significance of the local conceptions of personhood, which cannot beseparated from thekanda mpat, lies not so much in their universality or coher-ence, as in the fact that they convey important cultural values about the worldorder of a specific village and the place of individuals within that order, whicheveryone must learn as part of the socialising process and which are insepar-able from the context of the practices in which they are expressed.

Ottinos interest in the motif of thekanda mpatlies not so much in their universal,and possibly trans-local, character, or in their transmission in Bali as a coherentand standardised body of beliefs; rather, she takes up an ethnographic investiga-tion of their existence as a living and embedded phenomenon occurring at thelevel of the Balinese villagethe preferred playing-ground of anthropologistsdealing with Balinese culture. This perspective is in harmony with previouswork produced by the majority of anthropologists, who have paid scantifanyattention to written sources extant in Bali, questioning whether writtentexts are a legitimate way to interpret Balinese reality, and arguing that the two

domains rarely overlap. However, in order to know whether the ideas and imagescontained in texts have become part of the living experience of (some of) theBalinese or not, the contribution of philology is necessary. For, if we do not knowthe textsand the languages they are written and performedfirst, we are boundto remain unable to make any meaningful statements on the relationship betweenthese texts an the reality they are meant to (mis)represent. This is all the moreobvious in the case of thekanda mpat, where it is imperative to try to disentanglethe various levels of discourses around this central cultural theme if we want tounderstand howand possibly even when, and whyOld Javano-Balinese text-lore

has become entangled with Balinese folk-lore.As a first attempt to thread through this path, I may point out that the antiquity

and popularity of the four (or five) mystical siblings in Balinese text-lore is

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suggested by the inclusion of a work titledKanda Mpatamong the eight treatiseslisted as the secret texts of the Brahmans by the pioneer philologist Friederich inmid-nineteenth century (cf. Acri 2011b, p. 152). The so-called Tutur Kanda Mpat

may therefore be considered to be part of the canon of authoritative scripturesthat provides a fundamental and widely shared doctrinal basis to the orthodoxyof Balinese religion. It is no wonder, therefore, that since their very inceptionvarious Balinese Hindu organisations attempted to find a place for the kanda mpatin the universalised and standardised reformed version of Agama Hindu Bali, asit may also be evinced by Hooykaas (1973, p. 4) observation that [i]n the smallpublications during the last years emanating from Bureaus for Religious Affairsand from other sides thekanda mpatare recommended in the readers attention.18

Judging from the ever-increasing number of recent publications dealing with

this mystical level of discourse on the kanda mpat, it appears that this theme hasremained popular and productive among Balinese Hindu householders who, bybuilding a mystical relationship with their siblings, aim at attaining not onlyhealing and success in other mundane matters, but also access to the innermostpart of their Self, and thereby carry out a more meaningful Hindu life. Witness,for example, the Seri Kanda Mpat published by P@ramita press (Surabaya andDenpasar) since 2001, which consists in 18 booklets by I Ketut Nantra devoted tovarious doctrinal, yogic, and practical aspects ofkanda mpat-lore directed towardsthe obtainment of healing, supernatural powers, insight, etc.19 Several reprints, or

re-compilations, of older Javano-Balinese treatises have been recently published.20

Other booklets, which present summaries or exegeses of those treatises, are notmere reproductions of Old Javanese texts dealing with the kanda mpat, but ratheroriginal works or manuals synthesising old and new elements, which either rep-resent their authors intellectual understanding of the kanda mpat, or were ob-tained by them through supernatural revelations and yogic practices.21 This stateof affairs suggests thatas it is often the case with other aspects of BalineseHinduismreligious, meditative, and ritual practices were not exclusively per-formed and transmitted through living oral traditions, but were actually based onwritten texts, which provided their theoretical framework.22

Thekanda mpathold an important place not only in the domain of doctrine, butalso of ritualwhich may be said to constitute a sort of interface between text andreality. In Bali, the domain of ritual cannot be separated from that of doctrine, lestit become meaningless. This was already realised by Mershon (1970, p. 57) on theoccasion of her excursion into the intricate domain of Balinese Hindu ritual,when the Saiva priest Ida Pedanda Made Sidemen in an interview stated thatone could not understand the complexity displayed in Balinese rituals withoutknowing how the gods descended into the world and what role the elementalsplayed in their relationship to mankind. According to Sidemen, who declared to

have drawn his account from the Balinese Tutur Pancamah@bh+ta (The FiveElements), the gods and mankind descended from heaven, and took place inshrines in the human body, formed by the five elements, as well as in the three



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categories of Balinese puras, which are themselves represented in the body too.The fivebh+tas, gods, and Balinese prominent temples are linked by both Sidemenand his textual source to the kanda mpat.23

Ida Pedanda Made Sidemens statement captures the essence of Balinese religion,based as it is on a set of micro-macrocosmic correspondences positing an identitybetween the body and the universe, themselves inter-connected and sustained bythe ritual that also accounts for the expansion and resorption of the multi-layereduniverse from the One and into the One (cf.Stephen 2002). Thus, the origin (andend) of the human being finds a parallel in the origin (and end) of the universeboth being part of a common process of origination (and absorption) on differentlevels or layers. On yet another level, thekanda mpatframe the theory (and practice)of liberation of the Self: the physical origin (birth) and end (death) of the individual

finds a counterpart in the spiritual (re)incarnation into a human being and finalliberation from the cycle of rebirth, which is achieved through yoga leading to therealisation of the ultimate identity between the Self and the Lord Siva.24

Thekanda mpatrepresent an objectivisation of the five aggregates forming theSelf, which is itself identified with the fifth sibling, the youngest yet most import-ant among the four. As such the five siblings come to form a pentad, which is thenhomologised to the several other pentads known in Balinese Saivism. The universeof constellations of pentadic analogieswith the five gross elements, five colours,five mystical syllables, five senses, etc.widely mentioned in Saiva texts from Bali

was first, and most exhaustively, detailed by Hooykaas (1974, pp. 10516).25 In anearlier resume(1973, p. 4), Hooykaas introduced the homology between thekandampatand the pancakusika on the one hand, and between the gross/external andsubtle/internal layers of the Balinese universe on the other, as follows:

Characteristic for Balinese thinking is that they are identified with sages fromthe hoary past, with the rebellious sons of the Supreme God, who were changedinto ungainly animals and banished to the four directions. They began to feelrepentant, however [. . .], and then became the gods Iswara, Brahma, Mahadewa

and Wisnu. When hearing about this the little child, himselfbhuwana alit, smallworld, microcosm, at an early age learns to feel himself as being part ofbhuwana agung, large world, macrocosm, and to behave himself accordingly.This feeling of relationship betweenbhuwana agungandbhuwana alitis not onlymodern but ancient: in the old Hindu Balinese mysticism reference is made tothe sat kahyanganing raga, the six divine centres in the human body, whereasthe usualsat kahyanganare six famous sanctuaries in Bali (different according tothe province in which one lives).

These analogies appear to be more than the mere preserve of ancient treatises

read (exclusively) by learned elite: as anthropologists themselves have pointed out,they constitute a powerful feature of Balinesemodus cogitandi. For instance, Parker(2003, p. 186) notes that the salient in the many local treatises on the kanda mpat

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Tab

le1.

Kandampatan

dtheirmicro-m

acrocosmiccorrelations

Names

Leyak

Bo

dily

parts

Internal

organs

senses

elementsanimals

colours

Panca

kusa

kasLo

kap@las

(Sad@)sivas

face

/mantra

Directions

Angapati

amniotic

fluid

skin

kidneys

feeling

water

birds

white

Kusika

`svara

Sadyoj@ta

(SAN

)

East

Mrajapati

bloo

d

bloo

d/fles

h

liver

seeing

wind

qu

adrupedsre

d

Garga

Bra

hm@

B@madeva

(BAN

)

South

Banaspati

vernixcaseosa

sinews

bile

hearing

ether

snakes

yel

low

Maitri

Mah@devaTatpuruXa

(TAN

)

West

Banaspati

Raja

placenta

bone/marrow

heart

taste

fire

fishes

black

KuruXya

ViX>u

Ag

hora

(AN

)

Nort

h

LegaPrana

foetus

hairtips

hearts

ventril

smel

l

eart

h

plants

mu

lti-co

loure

d

P@tanjala/

PPtanjala

Siva/Guru

(`s@na)

(IN

)

Centre



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in Balinese literature is the extensive co-associations with which the Balinese loveto play. To Connor (1982, p. 261),

Each sibling has symbolic concomitants [. . .

]. This abbreviation of a theoretic-ally unlimited list illustrates that in Balinese conceptualisation, the individual,the supernatural and the macrocosmos fuse with one another andinterpenetrate.

According to Ottino (2000, pp. 13031),

The similarities perceived to exist between the inner cycles in the body, theflux of the seasons in the natural environment, and their comparison with the

course of human life, transforms the kanda mpat in one of the most powerfulcultural schemes of Balinese thought.26

Insofar as they constitute a sort of interface between thebhuta/sthula/sakalalevelof gross correspondences and the suksma/niskalalevel of subtle or mystical analo-gies, thekanda mpatwould seem to bridge the two levels or dimensionspopularand intellectual, or practical and speculativeof Balinese religion. They thereforerepresent an epitome of the human state in the visible world, standing right inbetween the invisible worlds of demons and gods.27 Bi-faceted as any powerfulmanifestation of numinous realities in Bali, they stand right in between good andevil, being capable of either protecting the individual and helping him to grow, orcausing harm to him.

Having presented, in very general lines, the most relevant ethnological andtextual data on thekanda mpatin Bali, in the following section I shall investigatein detail the motif of thepancakusika, and its connection with the related motif ofthe kanda mpata connection that both Balinese written sources and living in-formants are keen to make. By historicising both motifs through a text-historicaland comparative method, I aim at de-parochialising them and locate their rootsin a pre-modern trans-local discourse that contributed to shape Balinese culture

and identity in modern times.

In search of the origin: Indic, Javanese, Balinese, or Malayo-Polynesian?

Any programmatic statement concerning a search for the originbe it historical,geographical, or culturalof a given text or cultural theme is nowadays likely tocall to mind the Orientalists obsession with the quest for the Ur-text or originalpurity. However old-fashioned it may appear, this quest remains a necessary (yetnot sufficient) condition to any solid text-historical work, and is also useful to

properly contextualise, or (re-)historicise, any given cultural discourse. This con-sideration, therefore, fully applies to the constellations of themes forming thediscourses on the kanda mpat and pancakusika on Bali, which were, at least in

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part, introduced to the island from elsewhere, and there(after) transformed,restated, and performed in many ways. My analysis purports to understand howthe synthesis of heterogeneous cultural elements that is often regarded as an

epitome of the syncretic and inclusive character of Balinese and Indonesianculture has been historically constructed.

The first to suggest a possible Indic origin of the Balinese kanda mpatin theirpentadic form was Weck, on the basis of the explicit links with the five elementsmade in Old Javanese sources such as Tutur Pancamah@bh+ta, etc.28 More detailedand cogent correspondences with other Indic pentads29 advanced in Balineselontars were suggested by Hooykaas, who meticulously listed and reconstructedthe narratives around the origin of the kanda mpatand he motif of thekanda mpatwhen discussing the apparent parallels or convergences between South Asian

Tantric and Balinesemodus cogitandi. Stephen (2005, p. 97) manifests her perplexityabout this Indic-yet-indigenous theme when noting that [t]wo outstanding fea-tures of Balinese mysticism seem absent in current studies of Indian Tantrismtheconcept ofrwa bhineda andkanda mpatalthough both are expressed in words ofSanskrit origin. Further:

Hooykaas refers to evidence that the sect of Shivaism introduced to Java wasthe Pasupata. The leader of the sect, Lakulisa, had four disciples: Kusika, Garga,Mitra, and Kaurusya. These four figures, Hooykaas shows, form the basis of the

Catur Lokapala (guardians of the four cardinal directions) and the kanda empatin Bali, and manylontartexts support the connection he establishes. This wouldindicate that the kanda empat have a Tantric origin, even if the concept asdeveloped in Bali (or Java) has no clear Indian parallel. Recent research bythe philologist Max Nihom also points to Pasupata influences in Indonesiantexts. Although further historical and textual research is needed to confirmwhether the Pasupata sect is indeed the most likely source of Balinese mysti-cism, it seems to offer an intriguing lead.

Contrarily to Stephen, anthropologist Wiener (1995, p. 214) defined the kanda

mpatas most indigenous of spirits, since spirit siblings do not play a role ineither Hinduism or Islam; yet, she acknowledged that they are assimilated intexts to the same magical discourse as Islamic spirits and Hindu gods. Parker(2003, p. 199200), referring to an interesting parallel reported in a study onpersonhood in the societies of the Kei islands of Eastern Indonesia,30 voices thepossibility that the belief in spiritual birth-siblings could be pan-Indonesian. Thisview is also advanced by Headley (2004, pp. 1234), who in a section of his Java-focused study Durgas Mosque takes up a comparative approach, on the groundthat certain cultural comparisons with Bali are useful, presenting the Javanese

data against a clearer background (p. 123). This state of affairs leads Headleyto make some illuminating observations on the dynamics behind the construc-tion of such multi-layered Javanese motif as thepancakusikaand related mystical



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siblingsand perhaps, one might say, Javanese culture tout-court. Headley af-firms that

The advent of Indian religions to the archipelago brought the nomenclature ofa pantheon, but as in the case of the five seers [. . .] little more. With the foursiblings an Austronesian myth and polythetic classification are at work here.[. . .] The anthropomorphic identification of parts of the world with parts of thebody or of siblingship did not await the advent of Samkhya philosophy fromIndia to be used in Java and Bali.

According to Headley, an ancestral pattern of classificatory siblingship in WesternAustronesian societiesin which personhood is mainly relational, the internal

world is populated by invisible entities and related to the invisible cosmos, andbodily parts are identified with external realiais attested through the centralsection of the Indonesian archipelago, and has resisted both Hinduisation andIslamisation.31 The similarities between Java and Bali are striking insofar as thesiblings of ones birth are called Kanda, and, as in Bali, embody Kala in theirnefarious forms. Referring to Gondas (1972, p. 179) analysis of the Old Javaneseand Sanskrit wordk@>nacluster, Headley observes that the mystical siblings areunderstood in both areas as sections of the Ego.32 He further points out that in

Javanese lore the afterbirth is considered ones younger sibling, and the amniotic

fluid ones elder; the four elder siblings have remained in Javanese popular con-sciousness till today (p. 126, 6669);33 in Javanic mystical literature, the fivefoldSoul or Self (@tman) had been related to the five mythological seers (kusika) whohave since disappeared from the Javanese scene, but who once reigned over theabove fivefold extensions of the person by their classifications of the cosmos (pp.126 and 131, note 20). As a pentad, thepancakusikaare identified with other seriesof five in Javanese Primbon-Pawukon texts for numerology and prognostication;but there only the ego appears, whereas its four younger siblings are passed overin silence (p. 125).

Judging from the extant Old Javanese textual evidence, the pancakusika haveapparently enjoyed a long history in Java and Baliand even beyond, for they arementioned in a (Middle-)Malay inscription from Lampung, Sumatra,34 while aMalay invocation speaks of the four children of Siva who dwell at the cornersof the world (Winstedt, 1961, p. 146). In Java, the pentad appears in the openingin Old Javanese charters from the 9th century onwards, in Old Javanese literaturethrough the 16th century,35 as well as in a number of contemporary Old Sundanesetexts. Memory of P@tanjala, and seemingly also his four brothers, has survived inMiddle- and Modern-Javanese literature composed, on the basis of earlier mater-ials, after the coming of Islam on the island.36 The popularity of thepancakusikain

the Sundanese-speaking part of Java is suggested by their occurrence in textsrecovered from pre-17th century manuscripts from West Java, such as the Old

Javanese San Hyan Hayu,37 the Old Javanese prose version of the Buddhist

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Kunjarakar>atale,38 the Old Sundanese Siksa Kandan KarQsian,39 the Old Sundanese(pseudo-)historical chronicle Carita Parahyanan,40 and in the Old Sundanese ac-count of the travels of the Sundanese Saiva hermit Buj@nga Manik, where we

find an interesting mention of a sakakala of P@tanjala near Mount Bulistir, i.e. amemorial object or place in honour of that character.41

The widespread mention of thepancakusikain sources from a vast geographicalarea over about a thousand years attests to the importance this pentad must oncehave had in religious ideology and ritual systems of the Archipelago and beyond.Given the similarities between the two motifs in Java and Bali, it is hardly plausibleto opine that we are witnessing an instance of cultural convergence, but rather tothe independent survival of a common, and remarkably early, constellation ofthemes, of possibly heterogeneous origin, which at a certain point of history

became paradigmatic parts of a religious ideology encompassing meaningful cor-respondences playing on different levels of discourses. It may be suggested that,either in Java or, more probably, in Bali, the pentad of the pancakusikacame to beinternalised and subjectivised, becoming identified with the homologous (pre-existing?) pentad of thekanda mpat. Whereas in Java the memory of the pancaku-

sikaeventually faded away under the sway of Islamisation, and traces of the kandampatbarely survived in a modified fashion, both series continued to thrive in Bali,where they were reconfigured to constitute an interface of primary importance forthe grasping of the multi-layered Balinese (Saiva) universe.

Pancakusika: a localised Indic Saiva myth?

In this section, I will corroborate with textual evidence the hypothesis, only hintedat but never elaborated in detail by previous scholars, that the Indo-Nusantariantheme of thepancakusikaor pancarXidirectly stems from a significant narrative orfoundational myth of early Saivism known from South Asian Sanskrit sources,which treats about the revelation of Saiva (P@supata) religion in historical times bythe Lord through His avatar to a series of human teachers.

The first scholar to recognise thepancakusikaas a series of possible Indic originwas Goris (1931, p. 42), who fleetingly linked these five to an alleged Indian seriesof five disciples of Siva known as Kusika, G@rgya, Mitra, Kaurasya (sic), andPatanjala. It was Sarkar (1967, p. 641) who updated Goris account with morereliable data from Sanskrit sources, noting that the names of the first four panca-kusikacorresponded to those of the four traditional masters of P@supata Saivismknown from the Indian Subcontinent, who were themselves regarded to be thedisciples of the primeval guru Lakulasa, the mythical promulgator of P@nc@rthikaP@supata scriptures.42 Hooykaas (1974, pp. 12932), on the basis of Sarkars note,compiled a list of the extant attestations of the four P@supata teachers in Sanskrit

epigraphic sources that were reported by previous Indian scholars, yet withoutadvancing any hypothesis about their transfer to Nusantara, and without discuss-ing the remarkable transformation of Lakulasa into P@tanjala eitherinsofar as he



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is the last, yet foremost of the fivekusika-siblings, P@tanjala would appear to havetaken the role of Lakulasa as the most prominent character of the pentad.

A convincing hypothesis concerning the above issues has been advanced by

Sanderson (200304, p. 3745), according to whom in the subcontinent thesefour disciples are remembered as the originators of the four teaching lineages(gotra) of the P@nc@rthika P@supatas and commonly seated around him in sculp-tural representations.43 To Sanderson, the P@supata connection of the Old

Javanese pancarXis is also suggested by the association of the pentad with theJavanese OXi sect, a class of priests and ascetics to be distinguished from boththe Saivas (i.e. Saiddh@ntikas) and the Buddhists. These OXi have been regarded bySanderson (200304, p. 376) to have their Balinese alter-egos in the OXi Bhuj@nga orSenguhu priests, representing local descendants of the P@supatas, who held a

subaltern position and were mostly active away from centres of worldly and re-ligious authority.44 Sanderson has further argued that, given the absence of othersuitable candidates to cover the role of a P@supata master in this context,45

P@tanjala could be an attempt to make sense of a corrupted form of the originalSanskrit compound patanjala (i.e. pata:jala), he who drank the waters, whichwould be an epithet of Agastya referring to the mythological episode of his drink-ing of the ocean. As a matter of fact, no better candidate than Agastya can beimagined to fit into the list for, if in the Northern part of the SubcontinentLakulasa was considered as the first and most prominent teacher and an incarna-

tion of the Lord Siva himself, the sage Agastya was the ?diguru of the DravidianSouth (Filliozat 1967, p. 447).46 Being the cultural hero who introducedBrahmanism, he holds a prominent position in the traditional accounts of thediffusion of Saivism in the Tamil country. For instance, the Old Tamil Saivapoem Tirumantiram by Tirumular (2.1.12) mentions Agastya, also called theMuni of the North, as the first hero who transmitted Saivism to the South.According to Filliozat, this figure is to be connected with the introduction ofBrahmanism in Southeast Asia too.

Whereas in Java Agastya bears a position of great prominence in iconography,becoming a sort of quintessential Brahman bearing the attributes of theOXi group,neither textual occurrences of the name Lakulasa nor iconographic representationshave been found in the archipelago thus far. This suggests that the figure wasunknown there or, in any case, never achieved a wide popularity.47 This state ofaffairs implies that Lakulasa, who became a prominent figure only in theNorthwestern part of the Subcontinent from the 6th century onwards (cf.Acharya 2005, p. 218), was replaced by the more familiar Southern figure ofAgastya/*Patanjala in order to enhance the status of the doctrine. It is possiblethat this shift occurred in Java, or that there already existed an independentP@supata tradition in the Southern part of the Subcontinent, which was respon-

sible for the diffusion of P@supatism in Java.In my investigations of Old Javanese textual sources, I have been looking for

additional evidence in support of the P@supata link suggested by the scholars

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mentioned above. This evidence I have found in the Dharma P@tanjala, a section ofwhich constituted one of the six best sources of information on the kanda mpat/

pancakusika presented by Hooykaas (1974). The portion of the text in question

contains, I argue, an apparently P@supata narrative that might very well representa missing link for the reconstruction of the original meaning and significance ofthepancakusikain the earliest stage of the Javano-Balinese Saiva ideology.

The testimony of the Dharma P@tanjala

TheDharma P@tanjala is a speculative Saiva scripture in Old Javanese, with a fewinterspersed Sanskrit verses, which has survived to us through acodex unicusfromWest Java bearing a colophon dated 1469 AD. In spite of its uniquely Javanese

pedigree, the text shares many doctrinal points and formal features with two otherSaiva scriptures in Old Javanese and Sanskrit belonging to the Tattva genre,namely the VPhaspatitattva, preserved only in manuscripts from Bali, and theTattvajn@na, preserved in manuscripts from both Bali and Java (cf. Acri 2011a,pp. 810). Hooykaas (1974, pp. 166170) presented, with minimal or no commen-tary at all, an edition and translation of folios 45r48v of the Dharma P@tanjalaonly a fraction of the entire treatise of 89 folios, but one that according to him wasrelevant to the motif of thepancakusika, and also testified to the early existence ofthe terrifying ash-smearing P@supatas in Java as well as of different methods of

care for the dead in that island.My reading of the Dharma P@tanjalahas led me to the conclusion that the rele-vant portion of the text appears to have been borrowed by the author from anearlier, arguably P@supata, source, and integrated into the treatise as a mytho-logical narrative alongside a Saiddh@ntika narrative of the marriage of Siva and thebirth of Kum@ra. The figure of P@tanjala was perceived to be important enough toinspire the title of the text;48 furthermore, the narrative around this character andhis four brothers appears to provide an explanation to a crucial point of Saivadoctrine, namely the theophany of the Lord as a supernatural, and yet incarnatedand visible, being.49 Thus P@tanjala, and thepancakusikaas a whole, would seem torepresent a taxonomical link between God and Man, constituting an embodied andpersonalyet at the same time supernaturalmanifestation of that inconceivabledivine being.

The section on the pancakusikais introduced in the Dharma P@tanjalaby a ques-tion of Kum@ra, son and interlocutor of Siva in the text, expressing disconcert overthe existence of an embodiment of the Lord (bhab@ra) in the worldly cycle ofrebirth (p. 276.12). The Lord replies that His incarnations were various; yet, theLord Supreme Cause (bhab@ra paramak@ra>a) cannot be born as a normal incarnatedhuman beingHe who takes a body is the Lord in His sakalaniXkala(i.e. Sad@siva)

aspect, and not the Supreme Cause, which amounts to the aspect that is theparam@rtha, and hence niXkala, or ever untainted highest principle (sad@sauca,p. 282.8).50 A similar concern about the status of the Lord as incarnated or



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manifested on earth is detectable in a Sanskrit P@supata source, Kau>ninyascommentary Panc@rthabh@Xya to the P@supatas+tra. Kau>ninya, while commentingon s+tra 1.40, sadyo j@ta: prapady@mi I bow to the ever unborn, justifies the

scriptural authority stating that the Lord, being eternal and beginningless, is notborn like a human soul; for such a birth implies having stain (anjana), and God isfree from it. To him, the fact that the Lord is taught to have assumed earthlyincarnations constitutes no contradiction, for in Panc@rthabh@Xya ad 1.1 he statesthat, on account of His ability to assume any form He wishes (k@mitva) and ofbeing unborn (aj@tatva), the Lord, when He took a human form, entered thebody of a Brahman, descending on this earth at K@y@vatara>a manuXyar+pabhagav@n br@hma>ak@yam @sth@ya k@y@vatara>e avatar>a iti (p. 3.1617). The crucialpoint is thus that the Lord is not born from a female womb like a common

human beinga point that is also made by the Dharma P@tanjala(p. 276.1214, seeinfra).

TheDharma P@tanjala s account of the Lords former worldly incarnations (ordivine manifestations) begins by tracing His genealogical pedigree: having experi-enced a series of incarnations as yogin, he becomes a yogasvara for a thousand

years, having expired which He is transferred to heaven and given the name ofNalalohita; He then marries Sata, the daughter of DakXa; Sata dies, and He againbecomes a leader among yogins, fervid in his practice. He dies and is reborn as anincarnation of the Lord, not from sperm and blood but from the yoga of the Lord

(276.412). Since the Lord is speaking in the first person, He is probably referringto the form He assumed as teacher of the scriptures in the world, having His abodeon the mount Kail@sa. The passage is apparently relating about the Lords incar-nations that occurred prior to the one He is attributed in the historical horizon ofevents of the text.51

Having thus related His death and second incarnation (276.412), the Lordcontinues His account by revealing that He is the last of five brothers, the pancarXi,bearing the name P@tanjala. The theme of the pancarXi does not figure in thePur@>ic accounts of the legend of Sata and Siva, where the common sequel tothe story is the burning of K@ma, the marriage with P@rvata and the killing ofthe demon T@raka. A version of this legend is indeed narrated in the DharmaP@tanjala, immediately after the conclusion of the section devoted to the pancarXi(276.13278.20)an arrangement betraying a cut-and-paste operation by theauthor, who inserted the P@supata narrative in between the common mytholo-gemes of Nalalohita-DakXa-Sataand Nalarudraka-K@ma-P@rvata. Although the namesof the characters mentioned in the Old Javanese text do not entirely correspond tothose featuring in the Sanskrit accounts, the main elements of the myth are largelyoverlapping.52 This story is commonly narrated in the Pur@>as, but it is not foundin Sanskrit Saiva Tantras. The legend, however, occurs in the Sanskrit-Old Javanese

VPhaspatitattva (14.2732), where Siva is explicitly defined as Sraka>bhawho istherefore likely to be the unnamed form of Siva featuring in the DharmaP@tanjala s account.

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Let us now turn to the motif of the incarnation of Siva as the Lord andyogasvaratreated in the continuation of the passage of the Dharma P@tanjala related supra(p. 17) . There a sudden change of subject, from the first person singular to the first

person plural, occurs:

But [we] were not born from sperm and blood: we were born from the yoga ofour Lord, for we were five brothers. Our names, one by one: Kusika was theeldest, then followed Garga with Maitri, [then] KuruXya. Me, P@tanjala is myname, the youngest son among the Five Sages. I remembered about the stateof leader among yogins, that is the reason why I worshiped the Lord.(276.1417)

In this passage the Lordspeaking through his avatar P@tanjalaappears to referto Himself as a collective manifestation of His five children, the pancarXi. Whatfollows constitutes the longest and most exhaustive textual account on the

pancarXi/pancakusikaI have found in Old Javanese literature. It starts by describinghow the five brothers, summoned by the Lord, have to accomplish the task ofperforming His funerary rites and cremating His body after His death, whichoccurs shortly afterwards.

Witnessed by the regents of the ten directions, each one of them performs theirrespective tasks: Kusika buries the corpse of the Lord of the directions; Garga

unearths it and throws it into a river; KuruXya builds a tower for the cremationceremony; Maitri cremates the corpse; P@tanjala rubs the ashes on himself.P@tanjala then is transfigured into the Lord:

When it had already been burnt down, turned into ashes, all of them left. I wasleft behind alone, to gather up the ashes of the Lord. His ashes were taken byme, because of my devotion toward the teacher. That is the reason why Irubbed the ashes on my body, and I carried the remainder in my hands. Notlong afterwards, my appearance as P@tanjala vanished: [I assumed] the sameaspect which the Lord had in the past, when He was alive, three eyed and four

armed. A jewel served as womb. Likewise was the form that I obtained. All thedivine beings came to worship me [. . .] (276.17278.18)

The enigmatic section described above details a sort of magical rite, throughwhich the corpse of the Lord comes to life again in a transfigured form. Thevarious stages and procedures to which the Lords corpse is submitted appear tofulfill a special ritual procedure. In fact, each of the three types of funeral pro-cedures mentioned in this passage are known to the AnteXbividhi, an early L@kulaP@supata manual describing the last rite of persons initiated in the order, such as

householders, ascetics (s@dhaka) or masters (@c@rya).53 TheAnteXbividhi seeminglyrepresents the only known Saiva source that describes all three types of ritual;moreover, it prefers the former two to cremation, the usual rite prescribed in later



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Saiddh@ntika texts.54 TheAnteXbividhi(verse 23) prescribes that two P@supata offi-ciants separately perform parallel rituals on the corpse, which is only then readyto be buried, disposed in a river, or cremated. Albeit not identical, the procedure

described in the Sanskrit text is remindful of the one indicated in the DharmaP@tanjala. The outstanding character of the body of the deceased, i.e. Siva asNalalohita, and the purpose of the ritual, i.e. bringing Him to life again asSraka>bha (through the transfiguration of P@tanjala), may justify the fact thatthe Old Javanese text prescribes the performance of all these three funeraryrites. It may also be noted that presence of the ten directional deities orLokap@las, headed by Brahm@, occurs in the accounts of the earthly birth ofdivine characterscompare the worship of the new-born Buddha by theLokap@las described in Buddhist hagiographies.

Now, those who are familiar with the myth of Lakulasa in Sanskrit sources willnote the presence of the same burial ambience as well as the theme of theincarnation of Siva-Pasupati as an ash-smeared divine master at the head offour disciples.55 Bakker (2000, p. 13) relates the legend of the P@supata guruSomasarman found in the Malhar Plates and in the early Skandapur@>a, wherethe play of words may allude to Soma as a name of Siva and the transfigurationundergone by Lakulasa in the initiation ritual, which, when he underwent theanointment with ashes, made him shine like the moon. Although the process ofincarnation is nowhere described in detail and certain minor elements in the

accounts vary, the main motif of Sivas incarnation remains the same.56

The pres-ence of ashes (smeared on Lakulasas, as well as P@tanjalas, body) is a recurrentfeature too. Further, it is important to recall that in Panc@rthabh@Xya ads+tra 1.1Lakulasa is never mentioned, whereas Kusikas newly incarnated master is referredto as bhagavant the Lord; this details finds a correspondence in the DharmaP@tanjala, which simply speaks ofbhab@ra; it is only in the mythological accountfollowing thereafter, supported by (in)dependent textual evidence found in theVPhaspatitattva(14.2633), that we can infer that the form of the Lord intended inthe passage is Sraka>bha.57 Sraka>bha was incorporated into the scriptures of theSaiva Mantram@rga, where he usually appears in the role of the Guru, living on thepeak of the Kail@sa, who is responsible for the diffusion of the Saiva knowledgedown to earth, first to the Gods and sages, and then to human beings.

The section of the Old Javanese text describing the Lords former incarnationsshows a composite structure that, I believe, was the result of a cut-and-pasteoperation by the author of the Dharma P@tanjala. Now, for what reason did hefeel the need to insert the P@supata account between the two contiguousPur@>ic myths of Nalalohita-DakXa-Sata and of Nalarudraka-K@ma-P@rvata?A possible answer might be found in his eclectic approach, on account of whichthe harmonisation of a P@supata and Saiva Pur@>ic myth would have been deemed

desirable.Given the evident structural convergences that can be detected in the Sanskrit

and Old Javanese accounts, it may be argued that we are dealing with different

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versions of an early P@supata motif that developed independently in differentareas of the Subcontinent and in the Archipelago. As noted by Bakker (2007,pp. 23) with respect to the South Asian Saiva traditions, the idea of a guru

with four pupils named L@guni/L@kulin or Lakulasa seems to be an example ofinvention of tradition, which was introduced for reasons of legitimation. Just asLakulasa holds a superior status insofar as he is the incarnation of Siva, who in thatguise first promulgated the P@supata doctrine, so P@tanjala is the hierarchicallyhighest character of the Nusantarian pentad of thepancakusika, precisely by virtueof his having become the Lords transfiguration. The substitution of Lakulasa withP@tanjala, as I have argued above, may be a Javanese invention of tradition, de-veloped on the basis of an earlier common source. Similarly, the pancarXi, whichreflect the original status of the pentad as being formed by human teachers,58

were transformed into thepancakusikabrothers,intended as children of the Lord.TheDharma P@tanjalas account appears to document the shift from one series tothe other as it presents both ideas.

Pancakusika and Kanda Mpat: between taxonomy and salvation

On the basis of theDharma P@tanjala s account, I have offered cogent evidence insupport of the hypothesis that the pancakusika represent a Javanese reconfigur-ation of an in origin Sanskritic P@supata myth narrating about the supernatural

transmission of Saiva doctrine to mankind through Lakulasa, himself an avatar ofSiva. To sum up: the four (semi-)historical masters headed by Lakulasa, mentionedin Northern Indian Sanskrit epigraphic documents and textual sources, spreadbefore the 9th century to Java and Bali. There the four disciples of Lakul asabecame the four older siblings of P@tanjala; the five were elevated to the statusof (semi-)divine beings, being the four children of the Lord Siva, headed by thefifth, P@tanjala, apparently corresponding to Lakulasa insofar as avatar of Siva inHis Sraka>bha form. Then, at a certain historical time, either in Java or Bali, to eachof thepancakusikaone of the fivekanda mpatwas equatedbeing at once a mani-festation, alter-ego, and descendant thereof. The ensuing discourse, or master-narrative, may thus be regarded as a synthesis between a Sanskritic theme, i.e. thedescent of revelation from the timeless divine dimension to human time-and-place through a line of masters, and a Western Austronesian cognatic pattern ofpersonhood, i.e. the concept of a mystical twin at birth, symbolised mainlythrough the placenta, which still retains importance in Javanese, Balinese, andotherwise Austronesian cultures. The indigenous concept of a mystical twin,under the influence of Saiva teachings, needed to be expanded to a concept ofthe self as a pentad; the mystical import of the placenta alone was then elaboratedinto four siblings to match Saiva pentadsin the specific, the pancakusika.59 The

concept of four invisible siblings possessed by each individual, and its relatedpractices, eventually developed into an internalised cult encompassing a Saivaideology of salvation.



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One may ask, how a P@supata narrative around the revelation and transmissionto humanity of a great tradition such as Saivism, carried through Sanskrit textsthat are the preserve of the Brahmanical elites, became embedded in the little

tradition of popular belief and orthopraxis of Balinese commoners? In otherwords, what such two heterogeneous themes had in common to produce one ofthe most telling cases of cultural convergence between Sanskritic and WesternAustronesian traditions? The answer, I believe, lies in the fact that at the core ofboth traditions lies an epistemic system of categorisation of the internal and ex-ternal universe through related series of visible and invisible interfaceshuman,physical, animal, divinewhich stand in meaningful relation to the individual, andprovide the links to bridge different levels of reality.

This ideology is reflected in the very name of the siblings, kanda(Sanskrit/Old

Javanesek@>na), literally part, portion, or branch (of a stem or trunk). On theone hand,k@>narefers to the portions or branches that constitute the biologicalappendices of the fetus first, and the portions of the physical body (organs,bodily constituents, basic elements) after; on the other, it is semantically closeto the Sanskrita:sashare, portion, part, and as such it may refer to the visiblecounterpart (on both human and spiritual level) of the Lord that each and everyhuman being is regarded to be in potentiality. According to the Dharma P@tanjala,insofar as he has become ayogasvara, thereby realising his true nature, P@tanjala isthe transfigured visible counterpart of Siva as the universal teacher Sraka>bhaan

Indic idea derived from the P@supata myth of the incarnation of Siva as the masterLakulasa. The transfiguration or sublimation of P@tanjala into the Lord finds aBalinese counterpart in the belief in the transfiguration of the individual Selfhimself identified with the fifth among the kanda mpatas the Lord, occurringwhen one realises his fundamental identity with Him. This is, again, an Indic idea,for in both the P@supata and Saiddh@ntika tradition each devotee ideally aimed atbecoming asiv@:sa, at once a devotee of Siva and a visible portion/manifestationof Siva.60

As we have seen in the Dharma P@tanjala(276.1317), thepancakusika, being theLords children, are regarded as His collective embodiment, viz. His portions orbranches.61 Just like thepancakusika are at once children and manifestations orextensions of the Supreme Lord Siva, so the kanda mpatare at once portions,extensions, and counterparts of the individual, in both his bodily and subtle Egoicform. The individual is in his turn also regarded to be a portion or counterpart ofhis ancestors, who are symbolised by, or rather embodied in, the kanda mpat.62

In both thepancakusikaandkanda mpatseries, we find the same interesting pat-tern of inversion: we would expect the eldest sibling in both pentadsAngapati andKusika, respectivelyto be given the utmost importance, but this is not so. Just asthe last-bornthe individualholds the most prominent position with respect to

his siblings the kanda mpat, so the last-born P@tanjalaa transfiguration of Sivaholds the most prominent position with respect to his four elder siblings. In the caseof thekanda mpat, this inversion is the reversal that the last-born undergoes in the

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relation with his four elder brothers after his birth and through adolescence andadulthood: ideally, the hollow centre that is the fifth sibling at birth graduallyrealises his own potential, through a process of refinement and control over his

lower instincts, and becomes the greatest, taking full control of the four olderbrothers (cf. Ottino 2000, p. 1579).63 This reversal was explained by one ofOttinos informants as the last-born is the smallest, but has the potential tobecome the greatest. As we have seen above, this appears to be exactly the pointmade by the Dharma P@tanjala s account of the pancakusikaalthough P@tanjala isthe youngest, he is a yogasvara, and thus he who will become the embodiment ofthe Lord on earth.

Conclusion

My analysis suggests that the motif of the kanda mpat represents neither aSanskritic tradition, nor an exclusively Balinese (or Javano-Balinese) embeddedmanifestation of popular religion and folklore, let alone a Western Austronesianancestral pattern of siblingship, but rather a trans-regional synthesis or conver-gence between an originally Indic theme and an indigenous conception of person-hood. The ensuing system has survived and

the journal of hindu studies volume issue 2014 [doi 10.1093%2fjhs%2fhiu020] acri, a. -- pancakuÂ...

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