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THE
COMMUNITY All around and in the square are the important public places of the village; the town temple (pura desa) , With its hall of assembly (bale agung), the palace of the local feudal prince , the market , the large shed for cockfights (wantilan) , and the tall and often elaborate tower where hang the alarm tomtoms (kulkul) to call to meetings, announce events, or warn of dangers. Also important to the village life is the ever present waringin, a giant banyan, the sacred tree of the Hindus, planted in the square. Under its shadow take place the shows and dances given in connection with the frequent festivals; market is also held there in villages that do not have a special arket enclosure. In ancient villages the waringin grows to a giant size, shading the entire square and dripping aerial roots that, unless clipped before they reached the ground, would grow to trunks that unchecked might swallow up a village. A beautiful village waringin is an enormous rounded dome of shiny leaves supported by a mossy, gnarled single trunk hung with a curtain - tentacles that are cut evenly at the height of a man; but in the waringins that have grown freely outside the village, the tree spreads in every direction in fantastic shapes. The aerial filaments dig into the earth and grow into whitish trunks and branches emerging at illogical angles and filled with parasite ferns, a dreamlike forest that is in reality a single tree. Somewhere in the outskirts of the village are the public baths and the cemetery, a neglected field overgrown with weeds and decaying bamboo altars, with its temple of the Dead (c) and its mournful kepuh tree, a sad and eerie place. The bathing-place is generally a cool spot shaded by clusters of bamboo in the river that runs near the village, where all clay long men and women bathe in the brown water in separate modest groups. Some villages have special bathing -places with fancy water-spouts and low walls of carved stone, with separate compartments for men and women. Tedjakula in North Bali is famous for its horse bath, a special compartment that is larger and even more elaborate than the baths for the people.
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