THE PEOPLE

   NOTE ON MAYA DANAWA

JANE BELO in "A Study of Customs Pertaining to Twins in Bali" quotes the legend of Maya Danawa and the origin of Dalem Bedaulu from the Balinese manuscript Usana Bali:

It was long ago, in the time when the great mountain, the Gunung Agung, had just been made, A fierce and terrible Detya, Maya Danawa, was in power over the land. He was jealous of the gods and did not allow the people to give them offerings. The gods banded together to fight the demon and a war ensued in which many people were killed.

" Finally Batara Indra was able to overpower Maya Danawa, but in killing him his plan was to make him alive again, dividing him into a male and female part, to become the first Radia of Bali. Ile spirit of the demon was placed in a coconut flower, and on the slopes of the Gunung Agung the gods came and blessed it, and out of the coconut flower they made to come two children, a boy and a girl, who were called Mesula - Mesuli."

The boy and girl twins married and had children, also twins, who continued to rule in Pedjeng. These twins also married and had more twins, until a seventh generation of twin Mesula-Mesuli. The last male of these twins rejected his black and ugly sister in marriage for a girl dancer, thus breaking the line of royal twins. T'he last twin born was endowed with great magic powers; he could allow a retainer to cut his head off and replace it without harm to himself. But one day the head fell into a river and was lost, carried away in the rushing stream of a sudden bandjir. The,, retainer in desperation cut off the head of a pig and placed it on the shoulders of the king, who from then on had to live on a high tower and forbade his subjects to look up at him. He was seen, however, by a small child who passed unnoticed and who spread the news of the pig-head king, who became then known as Bedaulu, He-Who-Changed-Heads.

In the manuscript Catur Yoga we came across additional details of great war between the gods and Maya Danawa:

"The God were defeated by Maya Danawa and driven back to where a spring of Poisoned water had been created by the demon. The thirsty gods drank and died, all except Indra, who struck the ground a produced a spring of the elixir of immortality, amertha, with which be able to revive the gods." the local of this spring is supposed to be theholy spring of Tirta Empul near Tampaksiring. The gods attacked again Maya Danawa was wounded, and his blood flowed into the great river Petanu that runs near Blahbatu. Today the waters from this river not be used to irrigate rice fields because it is believed that rice water by it will, when cut, exude blood.