SIWA

An average Balinese knows, however vaguely, the names of countless bataras. He is well aware, for instance, that Batara" Brahma is the god of fire, that Surya is the Sun, Indra the Lor of Heaven, and Yama that of Hell, Durga the goddess of deathi, Semara the god of physical love, and so forth ; but unless he has had. a certain amount of theological edu-,, cation, to him the Batara Siwa is simply another of the remote high gods, although the highest in rank; a sort of Radja among the bataras.

However, to the learned Brahmanic priests Siwa represents, the abstract idea of divinity that permeates everything - the, total of the forces we call God. Siwa is the source of all life,.. the synthesis of the creative and generative powers in nature;, consequently in him are the two sexes in one-. the Divine, Hermaphrodite (Windu"), symbol of completion, the ultimate perfection. As male Siwa is the mountain, the Gunung Agug) the Lingga, Pasupati, the father of all humanity, all phallic symbols. He is also the Sun, the Space, and as Batara Guru', the,' Supreme Teacher, be is the maker of the world. As female is Uma,mother of all nature, Giri Putri, goddess of the mountains, Dewi Gangga and Dewi Danul, deities of rivers and lakes., These, his feminine manifestations (sakti), are taken by the common people as his literal wives, but the learned interpretthese wives, and his connubial relations with them, as the two, eternal principles: male and female, spirit and matter, unit d,~ for the constant production and reproduction of the universe, the exaltation of the union of the sexes for procreation.

The well-known Indian'trinity, the supreme gods Brahma,, Vishnu, and Siva, are in Bali expressions of the one force called, Siwa, but there is also a trinity in Bali: Brahma Siwa (Brahma) Sada Siwa (Wisnu'), and Prama Siwa (Iswara). In the mind. of the common people even this trinity becomes, with typical", Balinese miscomprebension, a deity in itself called Sanghyang trimurti or Sanggah Tiga Sakti, "the -Sbrine of the Three Forces." Thus Siwa "is fire (Brahma) wbotbrougbsmoke (vapour) becomes water (Wisnu')," which in turn fertilizes the earth (Pertiwi) to produce rice (Sri). Ideas such as this, juggled cleverly by the high priests, repeat themselves in endless sequence to form the intricate Brahmanic philosophy. All the gods that overcrowd the Balinese pantheon are thus manifestations of Siwa ' but they are not always on the side of righteousness, because the good creative and reproductive forces can be polluted and turn into evil and acquire a destroying, angry form. Thus the reversed form of Siwa is Kala, Lord of Darkness, born out of Siwa to destroy the world, just as Siwa's wife Uma became Durga, goddess of death, completing the cycle from life to death. In the Balinese manuscript Usana Diawa we find the story of the birth of Batara Kala: