Contexts - The Rough Guide to Bali and Lombok - page 464

“ba-leh”) for the preparation of offerings, cockfights and the less sacred dance performances
(such as those for tourists). The kulkul or drum tower is also here, housing the wooden bell
(“drum”) used to summon villagers to meetings and festivals. Entry to the extremely sacred
inner courtyard , jeroan , is via an imposing covered gateway, the three-doored kori agung
or paduraksa , whose central door is kept locked, opened only for the deities at festival times.
The jeroan houses all the shrines : the small, thatched, red-brick structures dedicated to a par-
ticular deity or ancestor are gedong ; the distinctive, elegant pagoda-style towers with multit-
iered roofs thatched with thick black sugar-palm fibre are meru , after the sacred Hindu peak
Mount Meru, home of the gods. A meru always has an odd number of roofs (three, five, sev-
en, nine or eleven), the number indicating the status of the god to whom it is dedicated. All
offerings are brought to the inner courtyard, the most sacred dances are performed within its
confines, and prayers are held in front of the shrines. The jeroan is quite often out of bounds
to the lay community and opened only during festivals.
COCKFIGHTS
Certain Hindu rituals require the shedding of fresh sacrificial blood to placate evil spirits,
so every temple's purification ceremony is prefaced by a cockfight , which attracts massive
crowds and even larger bets. Providing you wear suitable temple dress as a tourists are wel-
come to attend, but make sure you can stand the gore.
Prize cocks can earn both their owners and the temple tidy sums of money - and plunge
losing gamblers into debilitating debt - and you'll see men of all ages and incomes preen-
ing their birds in public. When not being pampered, the birds are kept in bell-shaped bam-
boo baskets, often in quite noisy public places such as by the roadside, to train them not to
be scared or distracted when in the ring.
Fights generally take place in the temple's special cockfighting pavilion or wantilan .
Complicated rules written on ancient manuscripts specify the days on which fights may
take place, and describe the detailed classification system under which the birds are cat-
egorized. Before the fight, a lethal 11- to 15cm-long blade, or taji , is attached to the left
ankle of each bird. This is considered a sacred weapon and cockfights are meant to be won
and lost by skilful use of the taji , not just by brutish pecking. Fights last for a maximum of
five rounds, and the winning bird is the cock who remains standing the longest - even if he
drops dead soon after. The owner of the winning cock gets the body of the losing bird plus
his opponent's share of the central fund.
Temple festivals
Aside from the daily propitiation of the household spirits, agama Hindu requires no regular
act of collective worship, no daily mass or weekly service, and so, for much of the year, Bali's
twenty thousand temples remain deserted, visited only by the village priest ( pemangku ) and