Bali in the words of Margaret Mead

My colleage Natasha emailed me this evocative quote by Margaret Mead with the remark "a bit objectifying, but..."

Upon the hundreds of stone altars of Bali, there lay not merely a fruit and a flower, placed as visible offering to the many gods, but hundreds of finely wrought and elaborately conceived offerings made of palm leaf and flowers, twisted, folded, stitched, embroidered, brocaded into myriad traditional forms and fancies. There were flowers made of sugar and combined into representations of the rainbow, and swords and spears cut from the snow-white fat of sacrificial pigs. The whole world was patterned, from the hillsides elaborately terraced to give the maximum rice yield, to the air which was shot through with music, the temple gates festooned with temporary palm-leaf arras over their permanent carved façade, to the crowds of people who, as they lounged, watching an opera or clustered around two fighting cocks, composed themselves into a frieze…Their lives were packed in intricate and formal delights

More on Balinese Royal Cremation Ceremonies

I am trying to find out more about "bade," the pagoda-like structures used to convey the body of the person to be cremated to the cremation grounds. What are they made out of and by whom? How long does one for a royal personage take to make? Are the artisans full time bade makers or do they make art for other uses? I am waiting for a book on Balinese offerings to arrive from Singapore that I hope will answer some of my questions.

Meanwhile, in searching "google" I came across a blog (on the third page into my google search) bemoaning the lack of educational content coming out of a google search on Balinese flower offerings,(http://1944keen.blogspot.com/2007/03/bali-flower-offerings.html). The poster complained about all the adds including one for 1-800-Flowers to which one commenter suggested doing a search on http://scholar.google.com/ instead.

There was a royal cremation for Tjokorde Istri Putri and Tjokorde Istri Inten from Puri Mas and Puri Anyar in 2006, about which there is an interesting photo-blog by ablteam at http://blog.baliwww.com/guides/119/

Image source: http://blog.baliwww.com/guides/119/