THE
RANGDA AND THE BARONG
Queen
of the leyaks and undoubtedly the most interesting'
character on the island is the blood-thirsty, cbild-eating
Rangda the witch-widow mistress of black magic.
A
curious ceremony in the temple of a neighbouring village
introduced Rangda to us. It was well after midnight,
and although the date for the temple feast was still
far off, there was a crowd, mostly women, in the courtyard
sitting in a circle, around a man who appeared to
be in a trance. Next to him sat the old pemangku,
the temple priest, quiet and concentratin attending
to the incense that burned in a clay brazier before
a monstrous mask with enormous fangs. The community'
it. seemed, was having a wave of bad luck and they
were asking Rangda to advise them, through the medium,
of what she required to leave them alone. The stillness
of the night, the incense, and the dim light of the
petrol lamp, all aided the feeling that the spirit
of the dreaded witch was really there. Soon the oracle
began to twitch and foam at the mouth, making painful
efforts to talk. The mask was placed on his bead and
the priest listened with intense interest to the incoherent
groans, muffled by the mask, which he translated in
a monotonous voice as the words of Rangda, now in
the body of the medium. After the offerings that she
demanded were enumerated, she reproached the villagers
for neglecting to give a performance of Tjalon Arang,
the play in which her triumphs are enacted. To end
the ceremony the musicians played and Rangda danced;
then the manwas taken out of the trance and Rangda,
presumably, went back to her abode in the summit of
the highest mountain, the Gunung Agung.
 Time
and again we saw Rangda. appear in various magic plays;
she was invariably represented as a monstrous old
woman, her naked white body striped with black. Rings
of black fur circled her long, hanging breasts, realistically
made of bags of white cloth filled with sawdust. She
was entirely covered by her white hair, which reached
to her feet, allowing only the bulging eyes and twisted
fangs of her mask to be seen. Her tongue bung out,
a strip of leather two feet long, painted red and
ending in flames of gold. A row of flames came from
the top of her head. She wore white gloves with immense
claws and in her right hand she held the white cloth
with which she hid her horrible face to approach her
unsuspecting victims. This cloth became a deadly weapon
if it struck.
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The character of Rangda has its origin in historical
facts, now interwoven with fantastic myth. At the
beginning of 'the eleventh century a Balinese prince
became the king of Java, the great Erlangga. His mother,
Mahendradatta, was a Javanese princess who ruled Bali
with her Balinese husband, Dharmodayana, until the
husband, suspecting her of practising evil magic,
exiled her to the forest. When Erlangg:a's father
died, leaving Mabendradatta a rangda, a widow, she
conspired to use her band of pupils trained in the
black arts to destroy Erlangga's kingdom. Professor
Stutterheim says that her chief grudge against Erlangga
was that be had failed to bring pressure upon his
father not to take another wife. Moreover, none of
the nobility would marry Rangda's beautiful daughter,
Ratna Menggali, out of fear of the old witch, and
her caste as a Javanese princess required a noble
marriage or none at all. Before Rangda was vanquished
by the superior magic of Mpu' Bharada, Erlangga's
teacher, she bad killed nearly half of Erlangga's
subjects by plagues brought by her leyaks. (According
to Stutterheim, the sanctuary of Bukit Dharma near
Kutri, gianyar, is the burial place of the famous
witch. There is kept a weather-beaten but still beautiful
statue of the witch, remembered as the Queen Mahendradatta
in the shape of the goddess of death, Durga.)
The
following is an extract of the current Balinese version
o the story of Rangda (translated from the Kawi by
R. Ng. Poerbatjaraka, in De Calon Arang) :
"
The old witch rangda Tjalon Arang bad sworn to destroy
the happy and prosperous Daha, Erlangga's kingdom,
because of fancied insults to her beautiful daughter
Ratna Menggali - the noblemen of Daha bad refused
her in marriage for fear of her mother's evil reputation.
Tjalon Arang went with her pupils to the cemetery
and they prayed and danced in honour of Begawati,
the deity of black magic, to help them destroy Daha.
The goddess appeared and danced with them, granting
her permission, warning the witch, however, to preserve
the centre of the kingdom untouched. The witches danced
at the crossroads and soon people fell ill in great
numbers.
"On discovering the cause of the epidemic, Erlangga
ordered his soldiers to go and kill the witch. They
stole into her house while she slept and stabbed her
in the heart', but Tjalon Arang awoke unhurt and consumed
the daring soldiers with her own fire. The witch went
once more into the cemetery and danced with her pupils,
dug out corpses, cutting them to pieces, eating the
members, drinking the blood, and wearing their entrails
as. necklaces. Begawati appeared again, and joined
in the bloody banquet, but warned Tjalon Arang to
be careful. The witches danced once more at the crossroads
and the dreadful epidemic ravaged the land; the vassals
of Erlangga died before they could even bury the corpses
they bore to the cemeteries.
"
The desperate king sent for Mpu` Bharada, the holy
man from Lemah Tulis, the only living being who could
vanquish the witch. Mpu' Bharada planned his campaign
carefully. He sent Bahula, his young assistant, to
ask for the witch's daughter in marriage. Highly flattered,
the mother gave her consent and after a happy and
passionate honeymoon Bahula learned from his wife
the secret of Tjalon Arang's power, the possession
of a little magic, book, which he stole and turned
over to his master. The holy man copied it and had
it returned before the disappearance could be noticed.
The book was a manual of righteousness and had to
be read backwards. The holy man was then able to.
restore life to those victims whose bodies bad not
yet decayed. Armed with the new knowledge, be accused
the witch of her crimes, but she challenged him by
setting. an enormous banyan tree on fire by a single
look of her fiery eyes. Bharada foiled the enraged
witch by restoring ' the tree, and she turned her
fire against the holy man. Unmoved, he killed her
with one of her own mantras;' but she died in her
monstrous rangda form and, Bharada, to absolve her
of her, crimes and enable her to atone for them, revived
her, gave her human appearance, and then killed her
again.
It
is only in the legend that Rangda could be vanquished;
the Balinese perform the story of her struggle with
Erlangga in a play, but always stop before the point
where the tide turned against the witch.
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INDONESIA
