logologo

Balinese Calendar

Balinese calendars time in limited units cuts out, not in order to count them or of to add up, but to describe them, specify them, to formulate them different significances which they take according to whether one places oneself at social standings, intellectual, or religious.

The first calendar is based on the interaction of cycles independent of names of days, subjected to permutation. There are ten cycles different from names of days, each comprising cycle from one to ten days. In each cycle the names are different, and all the cycles turn simultaneously. Theoretically any day given bears ten different names, which are to him applied at the same time (a name by cycle).

Fortunately for us, only the cycles of five, six and seven names are really important. One day indicated by three names, (i.e. offering a single combination of names resulting from the three cycles) will thus return once every two hundreds ten days (5 times 6 times 7). This system does not say to you which day one is, but which kind of day one is. And the Balineses perceive time like divided into two categories: full days where something occurs (it are "moments" or "economic situations"), those empty, where nothing or almost nothing does not happen (they are "holes").

The principal application of it calendar is the fixing of the ceremonies in the temples, and in particular it "Odalan", sometimes awkwardly translated by "birthday", but which rather indicate the "exit", "emergence", the "appearance". It acts of day when the Gods go down from the skies to live and revive the temple (and not commemoration of its construction...). Like the majority of Balineses belong to a half-dozen of temples at least, one understands that their ritual life is frantic; alternating without rate/rhythm enters hyperactivity and passivity.

The second calendar used in Bali is lunar-solar. It includes/understands twelve months named, going each from one new moon to another. In this system basically classifying and no metric, which says to you which day (which kind of day) one is, the aspect of the moon is not seen like determining the calendar, but like reflecting.

Thus, with their design depersonnalized of the personality (see “definition of the person in Bali") is bound, always our point of sight, a design of time die temporalized. One could summarize it phenomenon in the following way: the obliteration of ageing biological one of the sources principal of the perception of the time dries up which pass, which gives to the events between people an episodically quality. A perception standardized of the others supports the perception of the company like stable, and tends to found one motionless present.

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