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Indonesia: Cremation First Class

3 minute read
TIME

Rajah Ide Anak Agung Ngurah Agung was a popular feudal lord among the jolly citizens of his Balinese principality. The people of Gianjar loved him for the zest with which he lived and loved. He enjoyed great feasts of good food and was a connoisseur of cockfights. He kept four official wives and some 40 concubines. Before dying, he ordered for himself a Karye Pitra-Yadnje Palebon first class, the most festive form of cremation ceremony practiced by the Hindus of Bali. Though President Sukarno of Indonesia (who is part Balinese himself) deplored the celebration as an extravagance out of keeping with his nation’s austere, eight-year development plan, the people of Gianjar seemed to pay little heed. When their old Rajah died at 68 last December, they mourned him publicly, and privately they looked forward to the free public festivities of his Karye Pitra-Yadnje Palebon.

Six months elapsed before the mere planning of the rajah’s cremation began—a reasonably brief period, since in Bali, bodies of the dead have been known to lie in state for as long as 20 years before burning. No expense was spared, lest Ide Anak Agung Ngurah Agung’s dissatisfied-spirit return to haunt his family. The final cremation budget: $110,000. This included the price of a trip to far off Singapore by the rajah’s eldest son; tinsel, gilded paper and assorted, brightly colored gewgaws required for the crematory tower were not available in import-restricted Indonesia. The family’s 200-year-old palace was redecorated, and 1,200 roasting pigs were set aside for the nine-day public barbecue preceding the cremation.

Fortnight ago a crowd of 100,000 gathered as the rajah’s body was placed in its 69-ft.-high crematory tower. A 300-ft.-long red paper dragon was coiled around the tower’s base as if in readiness to bear the rajah’s soul to heaven. Priests chanted and tinkled ceremonial bells. Finally, the rajah’s body was put in a coffin fashioned in the shape of a bull, and the red paper dragon was placed on top. Then the priests lit the crematory fires.

President Sukarno, though invited to the ceremonies, pointedly stayed away. But the crowd had another, more important complaint: though this had been the greatest Karye Pitra-Yadnje Palebon in memory, it had also, quite possibly, been the last. The old rajahs are dying out; the new, impersonal Indonesian government in faraway Djakarta is taking over. Lamented one onlooker: “There simply are not that many more important corpses to be cremated.”

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