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ADOLESCENCE The filing takes place on an auspicious day after the person is blessed by a pedanda. The boy or girl may not go out of the house the day before and Van Eck tells of a Brahmanic rule that demands that the person remain in the dark for three days. The operation is performed by a specialist, generally a Brahmana, who knows formulas by which his tools - files and whetstones - are blessed " to take the poison out of them," to make the operation painless. The patient is laid on a bale among offerings, the head resting on a pillow which is covered with a protective scarf, gringsing wayang wangsul, one of the magic cloths woven in Tenganan, the warp of which is left uncut. The body is wrapped in new white cloth and assistants hold down the victim by the hands and feet. The tooth-filer stands at the head of the bale and inscribes magic syllables (aksara) on the teeth about to be filed with a ruby set in a gold ring. The filing then proceeds, taking from fifteen minutes to a half-hour, endured stoically with clenched hands and goose-flesh, but without even a noise from the patient, who is given a rest from time to time, so that with the help of a mirror he can see the results. Often he makes suggestions and even complains when the teeth are not yet short enough. During these pauses the patient spits the filings in}o a small " yellow " coconut adorned with a palm-leaf fan and flowers. When the filing is over, the boy or girl, paler than usual, but apparently not suffering pain, takes the coconut with the filings over to the family temple, where it is buried just behind the ancestral shrine. We questioned a girl who had just come out of the trying experience about her sensations and she assured us that she felt " shivers," but no pain; she seemed happier and smiled more freely than before.Among the puritanical Bali Agas of the mountains, adolescent boys (truna) and girls (daha) are considered pure people no, vet contaminated by sexual intercourse.
In those ancient village the inhabitants are divided into four separate
clubs: of men of women, and of " virgin " boys (seka truna)
and girls (seka daha), whose purity is jealously preserved, since they
have special rites to perform in the systematic village magic: the care
of divine heirlooms too dangerous for less pure people to handle. Consequently,
in the strict communities of the Bali Aga, sexual licence on the part
of a boy or girl is a crime against the village magic and is proportionately
punished. |
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