MARRIAGE

The teeth of the bride and groom had not yet been filed and the greater part of the morning was spent in the hair-raising task while the wayang music played in a corner of the crowded courtyard, mingling with the crashing of the cymbals and gongs of the orchestra that played out on the street. The male guests sat the places of honour drinking coffee, eating pastry, and chewing betel-nut, listening casually to two professional story-tellers that sat in the middle of the court reciting the erotic passages of t great literary classic, the Ardjuna Wiwaha, also a rule at weddings, one man chanting verses in musical kawi language, wihile the other translated with rich and expressive tones into guttural everyday Balinese.

The women wandered about among offering and presents, in and out of the meten where the bride was bell dressed, while the boy's father played host, seeing that everybody was taken care of, and directing the assistants who distributed trays of food and poured drinks.

After the teeth-filling was over, the bride and groom stimulated domestic activities: she washed a handful of rice and cooked in a clay pot over a small fire; the groom cut a branch of twi, the sort of acacia leaves used as a vegetable, which they cook together in another pot. Next they were led to a platform erect in the courtyard, a bed with mattress and pillows in which was placed the offering tetagpulu, two truncated cones wrapped, one in black, the other in red thread, each topped by a fan of palmleaf.

They sat on the bed, the boy cross-legged, the girl kneeling, and made reverences (sembah) , bringing their joined hands three times to their foreheads, each time holding between their middle fingers little sampian, fans of palm decorated with flowers. Next the food they had cooked together was brought to them on silver platters, and, with their necks joined by a Tenganan scarf with the warp left uncut, they had to feed each other some rice and twi. Their movements were hampered by the scarf and they were shy and clumsy.

The guests thought this extremely funny and laughed heartily, making the couple turn red with embarrassment. They gave each other water to drink from a kendih, but the crucial test was the mutual chewing of sirih, betel-nut, to which they were not accustomed. The boy chewed the sirih reluctantly, making wry faces, handing some already chewed to his bride. This concluded the first half of the ceremony, until the afternoon, when the priest would come to perform their ritual purification.

I was told that among the common people the girl walks three times around the offerings (pangulapan) holding the tetagpulu in her arms, while two of the boy's relatives hold a string across her path. She walks on until the string breaks (benang tebusan) . Later the couple walks again three times around a small dadap tree specially planted for the occasion, the girl with a platter of rice on her head, the boy carrying on his shoulder a pole loaded with good stuff such as coconuts, a chicken, and a duck.

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