Rangda
The battle between Barong and its nemesis Rangda actually has historical sources, Rucina Ballinger writes. She explains that in the Eleventh century, a Balinese king, Udayana, married an east Javanese princess Mahendratta. When he discovered that she was practicing black magic, he sent her to live in the forest. In addition, nobody would dare to marry her daughter, who was very beautiful, because they were afraid of Mahendratta’s black magic. She became Rangda and takes revenge on the Balinese by spreading pestilence throughout the country.
Rangda masks are sold in all the tourist areas of Bali. Rangda, in the dance I saw, had long, stringy hair that fell down to her ankles. She wore a gaudy shirt and pants of black and red stripes, and carried her “all powerful” magical white cloth. She has, like Barong, bulging eye and tusks, and has a long tongue, that hangs out of her mouth. She also has long fingernails.
The dance featuring Barong and Rangda is described in the chapter, “Sacred Dance,” in the Insight Guide to Bali (2002:95):
When the Barong appears, he is snapping his huge jaws and swishing his tail. He has come to protect the audience and the village. Then Rangda enters with her long claw-like fingers, her flaming tongue, and a necklace of human entrails that hang down over her pendulous breasts. She waves a white cloth, which wafts her evil magic as she stalks the Barong. A group of men with their keris sit nearby, representing the community. They see the threatened Barong and rush to attack Rangda. She casts a spell on them so that instead of stabbing her, they turn their keris upon themselves.
But the power of the Barong prevents their keris from piercing their skin. The dancers are in trance, and they are not play-acting when they turn the blades upon themselves.
Eventually, the Barong and Rangda fight to a draw, which means they both live to battle one another again. The dancers I saw were not in a trance and it was quite obvious that they were pretending to stab themselves, though sometimes dancers do fall into a trance and attempt to harm themselves.
The handout that was presented to English speaking tourists at the Batubalan version of the Barong and Kris Dance reads as follows (I have made minor editorial changes and corrections to the English):
THE BARON AND KRIS DANCE
The Barong-Play represents an eternal fight between good and evil spirits. Barong (a mythological animal) represents a good spirit and Rangda (a mythological monster) represents an evil one.
THE DANCES START WITH MUSIC OVER TONE
Followed by his friend the monkey, the tiger [the Barong] comes up. Three masked dancers appear, representing men making palmwine in the forest, whose child is killed by the Barong. The three men get angry and attack the Barong, which is helped by the monkey. During the fight the nose of one of the men is bitten off.
FIRST ACT
Two girl-dancers appear, representing the servants of the Ranga, looking for the servants of Dewi Kunti who are on the way to meet their Patih (Prime Minister).
SECOND ACT
The servants of Dewi Kunti come. One of the servants of the Rangda changes into witch and enters into both servants to make them angry. They meet their Patih and go together to Dewi Kunti.
THIRD ACT
Dewi Kunti and her son, Sadewa, come up. Dewi Kunti has promised the Rangda to sacrifice Sadewa. A witch appears and enters Dewi Kunti. She becomes angry and orders the Patih to bring Sadewa into the forest. The Patih is also entered by a witch so he does not have pity on Sadewa. Sadewa is then taken into a forest and tied up to a tree.
FOURTH ACT
Unknown by Rangda, the God Siwa appears and gives Sadewa immortality. The Rangda appears, ready to kill Sadewa and eat him up but Sadewa remains alive. She then surrenders and ask him to redeem himself. Sadewa agrees and kills the Rangda. The Rangda goes to heaven.
FIFTH ACT
One of the servants of the Rangda named Kalika comes before Sadewa and asks to be redeemed. Sadewa refuses. Kalika gets angry and changes herself into a boar and fights Sadewa. He defeats the board. Kalika changes herself into a bird but is also defeated. Finally, she changes herself into a Rangda, but Sadewa cannot kill her. Sadewa then changes himself into a Barong. Followers of the Barong appear and help him fight the Rangda. She is too powerful and the find ends in a draw.
What’s interesting about this dance is that we find out certain negative things about the Barong. He has eaten a child before appearing on the state. And Rangda, after being killed, goes to heaven—which is not to be expected. Finally, the battle ends in a stalemate, which means the forces of good and evil are evenly balanced.
The question arises as to the meaning of Rangda. The psychiatrists Gordon D. Jensen and Luh Ketut Suryani (who is a Balinese woman) dispute Margaret Mead’s contention that Rangda is a “reconstituted mother” who displays fear to her child and instills fear in him. Mead had suggested that Balinese mothers are “teasing, powerful, unsatisfying” women who arouse emotions in their children but do not do anything to satisfy them. The authors disagree with Mead’s psychoanalytic interpretation of Rangda as a mother figure since, they point out, she is held in awe by Balinese and represents the evil power of demons and witches. The opposite of Rangda, for Mead, was the Barong, the father figure, who supplied love to children and made up for deficiencies and problems generated by unresponsive, and as Mead put it, “murderous” mothers.
They point out that masks of Rangda are kept in village temples, along with those of Barong, to protect villagers from evil. Thus, Rangda is seen in an ambivalent way, just as Barong is seen as having a capacity for evil. He at a child in the forest before he appeared on stage. The dance also suggests that it is evil spirits that “enter” people and make them act the way they do, when they act in self-destructive or anti-social ways. These evil spirits are commanded by the numerous leak (also spelled leyan, lejak) witch-like spirits which are transformations or real people, who practice black magic and have the power to harm people. In actuality, as Bateson and Mead admit, the impact of these leak figures on social life in Bali is not very great.
For many westerners, the fact that the Balinese people treat Rangda and the Barong as sacred figures, endowed with great powers, seems remarkable. Yet, in the West we have a considerable number of demons of one sort or another, such as Satan, vampires, Frankensteins, and death-dealing aliens, though, with the exception Satan, we regard these creatures as figments of the human imagination (and some regard Satan as such, as well).
Does the fact that Rangda is a widow suggest anything about Balinese attitudes toward older women? The description of Rangda as having a long tongue and pendulous breasts suggests a caricature of an elderly woman. Do the Balinese harbor unconscious fears about elderly woman and believe that once women lose their husbands, they transform their sexual desires and needs into destructive impulses and thus they become witches? Is Mahendratta a paradigmatic figure for elderly women in Bali? On the surface, elderly women, grandmother figures, are esteemed in Bali, where people live in large household with many generations. But in their unconscious, might the Balinese harbor fears and anxieties about these women? This is not unusual, for attitudes about very old women in parts of the Western world are similar in nature to that of the Balinese. This unconscious fear and anxiety is something to keep in mind when one sees a Rangda mask or a dance with Rangda battling the Barong. And what about Sadewa, who was willing to sacrifice her son Sadewa to Rangda. What does this tell us about relations between mothers (in this case a “murderous” one) and their children?
For Jensen and Suryani, the Balinese see good and bad sides to everything. As they explain (1992:80):
All things in the Balinese world, e.g., the sun, cars, palm wine, and food, have two sides (rua bineda): the good and the bad. Which effect each has depends on the individual’s use of them.
So nothing is simple and Bali and everything depends on a multitude of factors that determine whether something is harmful or beneficial. This sensibility is reflects, I would suggest, in their two complimentary opposing figures, Rangda and the Barong.