The Journal of Hindu Studies Volume Issue 2014 (Doi 10.1093/jhs/hiu020) Acri, A. - PancakuÂ Ika and Kanda Mpat - From A PÂ Â Upata Myth To Balinese Folklore

The Journal of Hindu Studies Advance Access published June 20, 2014
The Journal of Hindu Studies 2014;133
doi:10.1093/jhs/hiu020
Pancakusika and Kanda Mpat: From a P@supata

Myth to Balinese Folklore
Andrea Acri*
Abstract: In this article, I aim at historicising, through a text-historical method,

Balinese discourses on the kanda mpat, the four mystical siblings that are
believed to accompany each human being at birth and throughout his life. I
trace the origin of this important cultural theme back to the master-narrative
of the pancakusika or pancarXi, a localised version of an in origin Saiva
P@supata foundational myth, which was transformed and adapted in Java by
the 9th century AD, and further localised on Bali. In so doing, I intend to
emphasise the Sanskritic roots of what has been described by anthropologists
as an uniquely Balineseor in any event Western Austronesianmanifestation
of orthopraxis, magic, and everyday popular religiosity, but which in fact stems
from a sophisticated, and trans-regional, tradition of Saiva speculations, beliefs, and related ritual practices. As discourses on the kanda mpat/pancakusika are anchored in, and therefore constitute an interface between, both
text and practice, they provide an opportunity for trying to bridge the
hitherto seemingly insurmountable gap existing between text-focused/diachronic and practice-focused/synchronic disciplines in the study of Balinese
culture and religion.
Are the xx century and tourism changing everything in Bali? As a response to his
provocativeas much as rhetoricalquestion, philologist Christiaan Hooykaas in
his Religion of Bali (1973, p. 3) remarks:
For an adequate answer a depth of knowledge and a geographical and historical
extent of experience is necessary, combined with a courage for prophesying
which is nowhere to be found. But it is possible to deal with an example of an
old belief which proves to be neither discarded nor doubted or intentionally
ignored in the present. It should serve as an example, a to the world outside
perhaps unexpected theme of belief that is quietly maintaining itself.
The example referred to by Hooykaas to perorate the existence of an element

of continuity in contemporary Balinese religion is the widespread Balinese
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*Corresponding author: a.acri81@gmail.com
Pancakusika and Kanda Mpat
Kanda Mpat: between text and reality

An effective and synthetic introduction to the kanda mpat-lore on Bali is that
provided by Hooykaas (1973, p. 3):
A Balinese dislikes being alone, either by day or by night. But then, he is not, for
he is constantly accompanied by his four elder brothers when he is a male, four
elder sisters in the case of a female [. . .]. They accompany him/her from shortly
discourse on the kanda mpat (or kanda empat/pat),1 the four mystical siblings that
accompany each human baby at birthin form of the amniotic fluid, blood, the
vernix caseosa, and the placentaand throughout his life until, and even after,
death.
Speculations, imageries, and practices around the kanda mpat have been
transmitted on Bali not only through oral folk- and ritual-lore, but especially
through a conspicuous body of texts of varying date of composition (pre- and
post-colonial), supports (lontars, mimeographed stencils, printed pamphlets, and
books), and genres (religious, magical, medical, or ritual). This being the case,
anthropologists and philologists alike have long since acknowledged the importance of the kanda mpat in the cultural, religious, and social life of past and present
Bali.
In this contribution, I am neither concerned with discussing in detail the
features of the kanda mpat and the related pancakusika, nor with presenting new
material on them,2 be it gathered from Balinese relevant texts or field observations. Limiting myself to use the empirical data already presented by
anthropologists, and drawing from Hooykaas seminal philological work
Cosmogony and Creation (1974), I rather aim at putting Balinese discourses around
the kanda mpat into historical perspective, mainly by tracing their origins back to
the pan-Nusantarian theme of the pancakusika, which itself constitutes a localisation of an in origin South Asian Sanskritic P@supata Saiva myth. In so doing, I aim
at highlighting the Sanskritic roots of what has been described by anthropologists
as an uniquely Balineseor in any event Western Austronesianmanifestation of
orthopraxis and everyday popular worship, but which in fact stems from a sophisticated, and trans-local, tradition of Indo-Javano-Balinese key speculations, beliefs,
and related ritual practices.
Insofar as the motif of the kanda mpat stands at the interface between performance and textthe former intended as practice (ritual or otherwise) enacted in
popular, living, and everyday-life milieux, the latter as an abstract, prescriptive, and intellectual tradition transmitted from the past through elite milieuxit
constitutes a case study that may be instrumental in trying to bridge the seemingly insurmountable gap between text-focused/diachronic and practice-focused/
synchronic disciplines that has so far characterised, and indeed hampered, the
study of Balinese culture and religion.
Andrea Acri
Hooykaas goes on to list a series of actions and offerings to pay respect to the
kanda mpat observed by young Balinese mothers on the occasion of breastfeeding
their baby,3 parents on the occasion of the rites of passage of their child,4 teenage
boys and girls before their meals,5 Brahman priests before going to sleep, and
officiants of funerary rituals6all being quite common events in the landscape of
Balis everyday life.
On the island, Hooykaas notes (1973, p. 4), virtually nobody is ignorant about the
kanda mpats proper names: Anggapati, Mrajapati, Banaspati, and Banaspati Raja
(cf. Fig. 1); further, most Balinese are aware of the alternative names by which the
four are also known, for example, during the stage of the fetal development of the
baby. Stephen (2005, p. 37) points out that the kanda mpat are often collectively
referred to by ordinary people as catur s@nak (Old Javanese, the four siblings) or
simply nyama (Balinese) siblings. Insofar as they provide, the link between the
micro- and macrocosmos, man and God, natural and psycho-physical elements and
their corresponding supra-mundane realities, they constitute a key element in
framing the identity of individuals on a spiritual or subtle level (suksma, niskala),
in the tangible world (sthula, sakala), and in human society. In harmony with this
Balinesein fact (also) Sanskriticconception of a multi-layered reality, the kanda
mpat intervene in all the three levels or worldsthe elemental (bhuta) or lowest
(nistha), the human (manusa) or middle (madhya), and the divine (dewa) or highest
(utama)that frame everything which exists, both in the outward and physical
universe as well as in the internal subtle universe, which is the realm of potentialities and powerful forces.7
The kanda mpat are known under different names/manifestations according to
the level they are connected to. At the elemental level, they form the series beginning with Anggapati, etc.; at the manusa level, they assume various (subsidiary)
sets of names according to the respective the life stages of the individual8; at
the dewa level, they embody various series of divine figures, viz. the first four
characters of the pentad known as pancakusika or pancarXi (Five Kusikas or Five
Sages)Kusika, Garga, Metri, and KuruXya, on whom I will elaborate infraas well
as the series of four Brahmanical deities of the main cardinal directions (Catur
Lokap@la), viz. `svara (E), Brahm@ (S), Mah@deva (W), and ViX>u (N). In their
after conception till after cremation, actually till the final act of deliverance of
the soul. They are the personified concomitants of his birth: the amniotic fluid,
the blood, the vernix caseosa and the after birth. It is not well possible to
preserve the first three, but the afterbirth is tangible enough. Shortly after
birth it is buried outside the main entrance to the sleeping house. A
father leaving the door has it buried to the right in the case of a male
child whereas the left side is given to the females. A river stone of between
ten to twenty kilogram covers this spot. Finally a fragment of the umbilical
cord is preserved as an amulet, kept in a silver box, hung around the childs
neck.
pentadic form, the fifth, central and most important element is constituted
by the individual Self, also called Lega Prana, ManuXa J@ti or ManuXa Sakti
(bhuta and manusa), the OXi P@tanjala/PrQtanjala, and/or the paramount Lord
Siva (dewa).
Another common classification of the kanda mpat encompasses four (or, rather,
one plus three) levels, namely rare, bhuta, sari, and dewa.9 At the rare (child) level,
from which the other three are regarded to come, the kanda mpat are connected
Fig. 1: Kanda Mpat, painting by Mangku Muriati, 2009 (Photo Emma Furno, the Australian
Museum).
Andrea Acri
Unexpectedly, the key Balinese ritual of childbirth survived the move away
from home towards hospital and hygienic rationality. The contents of the
bucket under the bedthe embodied kanda mpatwere still carefully wrapped
and tended, taken home and buried with due ceremony. It might seem a small
with gestation, embryology, and everything that concerns the baby prior to and
immediately after his birth. At the bhuta level, the kanda mpat are connected with
the physical elements, human physiology, mundane activities, and death; they also
intervene in the domain of rites de passage, ceremonies, offerings, and cremation.
At the sari (essence or refined) level, they are connected to the intellectual and
psychical growth of the individual. At the dewa level, they govern subtle realities
and mystical matters, such as various forms of meditation and yoga. These levels
would seem to constitute a hierarchy, being understood as the gradual development or refinement of the individual from the coarse to the subtle stages, and
culminating in the dewa level, in which the realisation of the Selfs identity with
the Supreme Reality, i.e. Siva in His highest form (Paramasiva), is ideally supposed
to occur.
At the bhuta level, the kanda mpat are instrumental in fulfilling the individualistic purposes that govern the dynamics of popular religiosityintended as a
constellation of magico-ritual practices aiming at propitiating benign beings,
and ward-off evils caused by evil beings. The kanda mpat are universally regarded
to be benevolent toward their younger sibling only if they are given proper food
(offerings) and reverential thoughts; if neglected, the will refrain from helping him
in difficult situation, or even become evil beings who bring him misfortunes, or
again torture him in hell after his death, in the guise of Yamas demonic servants.10
Since bhuta in Balinese also means demon or demonic, this level is also connected with witchcraft, quest for supernatural faculties, black-magic (or lefthanded, pengiwa) practices, and dark forces.11 The place where offerings are
given to the kanda mpat is shared with evil bhuta and kala; and it is only through
black magic that one can see his kanda mpat.
Special categories of persons dealing with either natural or supernatural forces,
such as all classes of priests and ritual actors, and even performers such as dalangs,
who are prone to all sorts of dangers during their shows, are conversant with
kanda mpat-lore. Because of their ambivalent and powerful character, they form a
tabu topic, at least among the people who claim to be in some way connected with
them; these individuals are generally hesitant to openly mention the names of the
kanda mpat or talk about the details of their relationship with the siblings in their
personal life.12 A category of people particularly linked with practices relating to
the kanda mpat are the balians or traditional healers,13 who employ their magical
skills to cure illnesses of children, as well as of adults. This level of discourse on the
kanda mpat is by no means relegated to a dead past but enjoys a great popularity in
contemporary Bali.14 Hooykaas would be pleased to know that, as noted by Parker
(2003, p. 196),

point, but given the dogged fight of the Balinese to keep their religion and to
have it registered as one of the five acknowledged religions (agama) in
Indonesia, the respect allowed the kanda mpat is significant. [. . .] Perhaps the
special place occupied by Balinese culture within Indonesia combined with a
continuing, if unofficial, pan-Indonesian belief in a host of spirits and jinns.
[. . .] [T]he power of the kanda mpat, the Four Siblings that accompany each baby
from birth, and the anti-modernist and anti-rationalist beliefs in sorcery and
witchcraft maintain a premodern domain to which modern Western biomedicine has no access.
no dimension of Balinese culture has been subjected to greater indifference on

the part of Western scholarship than the kanda mpat. [. . .] Dismissed as mere
superstitions, left-over from ancient beliefs no longer relevant to a world
without magical practices, the kanda mpat nevertheless reflect an interesting
synchretisation [sic] of Taoist, Hinduist and Buddhist doctrines about the
person.
In spite of the questionableand nowhere explained or justifiedview that the

kanda mpat would reflect a syncretisation of Taoist (sic), Hindu, and Buddhist
Analogous practices are referred to by Hobart et al. (1996, p. 113). Apart from the
bio-medical domain, beliefs, and practices around the kanda mpat form an important part of the discourses current in contemporary Balinese paranormal and mystical milieux, where the ability to contact the kanda mpat acquired by the
practitioners serves the purpose of controlling the elements, thereby gaining
supernatural powers.15 At the bhuta level, the internal subtle realities and powerful
invisible forces at play are submitted to ones will through meditation and visualisation of the kanda mpat, muttering of special mantras, and enactment of other
internalised psycho-physical techniques. When, however, these practices are not
directed to the obtainment of mundane powers but rather understood as means to
achieve liberation (moksa), they are regarded as belonging to the dewa level. At this
level, the kanda mpat are connected, and in fact identified, with the Saiva mystical
syllables sa ba ta a i, which constitute the initials of the five aspects or faces of
Sad@sivas mantric body,16 and which often occur in the ritual or yogic reenactment of the micro-macrocosmic process of expansion and resorption constituting
the Balinese (in origin Saiva) dynamic universe (cf. Stephen 2005, pp. 107, 130).
The ethnographic data reported above leave little to doubt that discourses,
narratives and practices on the kanda mpat, whether bookish or not, constitute
an integral part of many constitutive aspects of life in past and present Bali, being
linked to a constellation of representations, beliefs, rituals, folk, and magical practices. These domains, one would expect, constitute the anthropologists elective
fields of investigation. Yet, as noted by Ottino (2000, p. 129), who devoted to the
kanda mpat the greatest part of Chapter three (pp. 127162) of her anthropological
monograph,
Andrea Acri
doctrines, Ottino is right in lamenting the lack of interest in the kanda mpat manifested by scholars of Bali, and in particular by anthropologists.17 According to her
(2000, p. 129), this state of affairs is due to the fact that most of what is known about
the kanda mpat originates from the Old Javanese texts presented by Hooykaas in his
philological work; in contrast, the material presented in her study
A hiatus between texts and everyday life appears to be reflected in Ottinos appreciation of the two aspects as differing somewhat. She continues:
Yet the significance of the local conceptions of personhood, which cannot be
separated from the kanda mpat, lies not so much in their universality or coherence, as in the fact that they convey important cultural values about the world
order of a specific village and the place of individuals within that order, which
everyone must learn as part of the socialising process and which are inseparable from the context of the practices in which they are expressed.
Ottinos interest in the motif of the kanda mpat lies not so much in their universal,
and possibly trans-local, character, or in their transmission in Bali as a coherent
and standardised body of beliefs; rather, she takes up an ethnographic investigation of their existence as a living and embedded phenomenon occurring at the
level of the Balinese villagethe preferred playing-ground of anthropologists
dealing with Balinese culture. This perspective is in harmony with previous
work produced by the majority of anthropologists, who have paid scantif
anyattention to written sources extant in Bali, questioning whether written
texts are a legitimate way to interpret Balinese reality, and arguing that the two
domains rarely overlap. However, in order to know whether the ideas and images
contained in texts have become part of the living experience of (some of) the
Balinese or not, the contribution of philology is necessary. For, if we do not know
the textsand the languages they are written and performedfirst, we are bound
to remain unable to make any meaningful statements on the relationship between
these texts an the reality they are meant to (mis)represent. This is all the more
obvious in the case of the kanda mpat, where it is imperative to try to disentangle
the various levels of discourses around this central cultural theme if we want to
understand howand possibly even when, and whyOld Javano-Balinese text-lore
has become entangled with Balinese folk-lore.
As a first attempt to thread through this path, I may point out that the antiquity
and popularity of the four (or five) mystical siblings in Balinese text-lore is
was obtained from specific persons, men from Munduk, mostly ritual experts,
because they are the ones who have the most extensive dealing with them. It
reflects their understanding of the role of the four siblings in their lives, and is
bound to differ somewhat from the accounts available in the philological literature, or from the cheap roneotyped brochures found in bookshops.
suggested by the inclusion of a work titled Kanda Mpat among the eight treatises
listed as the secret texts of the Brahmans by the pioneer philologist Friederich in
mid-nineteenth century (cf. Acri 2011b, p. 152). The so-called Tutur Kanda Mpat
may therefore be considered to be part of the canon of authoritative scriptures
that provides a fundamental and widely shared doctrinal basis to the orthodoxy
of Balinese religion. It is no wonder, therefore, that since their very inception
various Balinese Hindu organisations attempted to find a place for the kanda mpat
in the universalised and standardised reformed version of Agama Hindu Bali, as
it may also be evinced by Hooykaas (1973, p. 4) observation that [i]n the small
publications during the last years emanating from Bureaus for Religious Affairs
and from other sides the kanda mpat are recommended in the readers attention.18
Judging from the ever-increasing number of recent publications dealing with
this mystical level of discourse on the kanda mpat, it appears that this theme has
remained popular and productive among Balinese Hindu householders who, by
building a mystical relationship with their siblings, aim at attaining not only
healing and success in other mundane matters, but also access to the innermost
part of their Self, and thereby carry out a more meaningful Hindu life. Witness,
for example, the Seri Kanda Mpat published by P@ramita press (Surabaya and
Denpasar) since 2001, which consists in 18 booklets by I Ketut Nantra devoted to
various doctrinal, yogic, and practical aspects of kanda mpat-lore directed towards
the obtainment of healing, supernatural powers, insight, etc.19 Several reprints, or
re-compilations, of older Javano-Balinese treatises have been recently published.20
Other booklets, which present summaries or exegeses of those treatises, are not
mere reproductions of Old Javanese texts dealing with the kanda mpat, but rather
original works or manuals synthesising old and new elements, which either represent their authors intellectual understanding of the kanda mpat, or were obtained by them through supernatural revelations and yogic practices.21 This state
of affairs suggests thatas it is often the case with other aspects of Balinese
Hinduismreligious, meditative, and ritual practices were not exclusively performed and transmitted through living oral traditions, but were actually based on
written texts, which provided their theoretical framework.22
The kanda mpat hold an important place not only in the domain of doctrine, but
also of ritualwhich may be said to constitute a sort of interface between text and
reality. In Bali, the domain of ritual cannot be separated from that of doctrine, lest
it become meaningless. This was already realised by Mershon (1970, p. 57) on the
occasion of her excursion into the intricate domain of Balinese Hindu ritual,
when the Saiva priest Ida Pedanda Made Sidemen in an interview stated that
one could not understand the complexity displayed in Balinese rituals without
knowing how the gods descended into the world and what role the elementals
played in their relationship to mankind. According to Sidemen, who declared to
have drawn his account from the Balinese Tutur Pancamah@bh+ta (The Five
Elements), the gods and mankind descended from heaven, and took place in
shrines in the human body, formed by the five elements, as well as in the three
Andrea Acri
Characteristic for Balinese thinking is that they are identified with sages from
the hoary past, with the rebellious sons of the Supreme God, who were changed
into ungainly animals and banished to the four directions. They began to feel
repentant, however [. . .], and then became the gods Iswara, Brahma, Mahadewa
and Wisnu. When hearing about this the little child, himself bhuwana alit, small
world, microcosm, at an early age learns to feel himself as being part of
bhuwana agung, large world, macrocosm, and to behave himself accordingly.
This feeling of relationship between bhuwana agung and bhuwana alit is not only
modern but ancient: in the old Hindu Balinese mysticism reference is made to
the sat kahyanganing raga, the six divine centres in the human body, whereas
the usual sat kahyangan are six famous sanctuaries in Bali (different according to
the province in which one lives).
These analogies appear to be more than the mere preserve of ancient treatises
read (exclusively) by learned elite: as anthropologists themselves have pointed out,
they constitute a powerful feature of Balinese modus cogitandi. For instance, Parker
(2003, p. 186) notes that the salient in the many local treatises on the kanda mpat
categories of Balinese puras, which are themselves represented in the body too.
The five bh+tas, gods, and Balinese prominent temples are linked by both Sidemen
and his textual source to the kanda mpat.23
Ida Pedanda Made Sidemens statement captures the essence of Balinese religion,
based as it is on a set of micro-macrocosmic correspondences positing an identity
between the body and the universe, themselves inter-connected and sustained by
the ritual that also accounts for the expansion and resorption of the multi-layered
universe from the One and into the One (cf. Stephen 2002). Thus, the origin (and
end) of the human being finds a parallel in the origin (and end) of the universe
both being part of a common process of origination (and absorption) on different
levels or layers. On yet another level, the kanda mpat frame the theory (and practice)
of liberation of the Self: the physical origin (birth) and end (death) of the individual
finds a counterpart in the spiritual (re)incarnation into a human being and final
liberation from the cycle of rebirth, which is achieved through yoga leading to the
realisation of the ultimate identity between the Self and the Lord Siva.24
The kanda mpat represent an objectivisation of the five aggregates forming the
Self, which is itself identified with the fifth sibling, the youngest yet most important among the four. As such the five siblings come to form a pentad, which is then
homologised to the several other pentads known in Balinese Saivism. The universe
of constellations of pentadic analogieswith the five gross elements, five colours,
five mystical syllables, five senses, etc.widely mentioned in Saiva texts from Bali
was first, and most exhaustively, detailed by Hooykaas (1974, pp. 10516).25 In an
earlier resume (1973, p. 4), Hooykaas introduced the homology between the kanda
mpat and the pancakusika on the one hand, and between the gross/external and
subtle/internal layers of the Balinese universe on the other, as follows:
Banaspati
bile
liver
hair tips
wind
water
taste
earth
fire
white
colours
plants
fishes
snakes
KuruXya
Maitri
Garga
Kusika
Sadyoj@ta
(SAN)
Brahm@
B@madeva
(BAN)
Mah@deva TatpuruXa
(TAN)
ViX>u
Aghora
(AN)
Siva/Guru (`s@na)
(IN)
`svara
Centre
North
West
South
East
Pancakusakas Lokap@las (Sad@)sivas Directions

face/mantra
multi-coloured P@tanjala/
PPtanjala
black
yellow
quadrupeds red
birds
elements animals
hearing ether
seeing
feeling
senses
hearts
smell
ventril
bone/marrow heart
blood/flesh
kidneys
Internal
organs
Banaspati placenta
Raja
Lega Prana foetus
vernix caseosa sinews
Mrajapati
skin
amniotic
fluid
blood
Angapati
Bodily
parts
Leyak
Names
Table 1. Kanda mpat and their micro-macrocosmic correlations
10
Andrea Acri
11
in Balinese literature is the extensive co-associations with which the Balinese love
to play. To Connor (1982, p. 261),
Each sibling has symbolic concomitants [. . .]. This abbreviation of a theoretically unlimited list illustrates that in Balinese conceptualisation, the individual,
the supernatural and the macrocosmos fuse with one another and
interpenetrate.
The similarities perceived to exist between the inner cycles in the body, the
flux of the seasons in the natural environment, and their comparison with the
course of human life, transforms the kanda mpat in one of the most powerful
cultural schemes of Balinese thought.26
Insofar as they constitute a sort of interface between the bhuta/sthula/sakala level

of gross correspondences and the suksma/niskala level of subtle or mystical analogies, the kanda mpat would seem to bridge the two levels or dimensionspopular
and intellectual, or practical and speculativeof Balinese religion. They therefore
represent an epitome of the human state in the visible world, standing right in
between the invisible worlds of demons and gods.27 Bi-faceted as any powerful
manifestation of numinous realities in Bali, they stand right in between good and
evil, being capable of either protecting the individual and helping him to grow, or
causing harm to him.
Having presented, in very general lines, the most relevant ethnological and
textual data on the kanda mpat in Bali, in the following section I shall investigate
in detail the motif of the pancakusika, and its connection with the related motif of
the kanda mpata connection that both Balinese written sources and living informants are keen to make. By historicising both motifs through a text-historical
and comparative method, I aim at de-parochialising them and locate their roots
in a pre-modern trans-local discourse that contributed to shape Balinese culture
and identity in modern times.
In search of the origin: Indic, Javanese, Balinese, or Malayo-Polynesian?
Any programmatic statement concerning a search for the originbe it historical,
geographical, or culturalof a given text or cultural theme is nowadays likely to
call to mind the Orientalists obsession with the quest for the Ur-text or original
purity. However old-fashioned it may appear, this quest remains a necessary (yet
not sufficient) condition to any solid text-historical work, and is also useful to
properly contextualise, or (re-)historicise, any given cultural discourse. This consideration, therefore, fully applies to the constellations of themes forming the
discourses on the kanda mpat and pancakusika on Bali, which were, at least in
According to Ottino (2000, pp. 13031),
12
Hooykaas refers to evidence that the sect of Shivaism introduced to Java was
the Pasupata. The leader of the sect, Lakulisa, had four disciples: Kusika, Garga,
Mitra, and Kaurusya. These four figures, Hooykaas shows, form the basis of the
Catur Lokapala (guardians of the four cardinal directions) and the kanda empat
in Bali, and many lontar texts support the connection he establishes. This would
indicate that the kanda empat have a Tantric origin, even if the concept as
developed in Bali (or Java) has no clear Indian parallel. Recent research by
the philologist Max Nihom also points to Pasupata influences in Indonesian
texts. Although further historical and textual research is needed to confirm
whether the Pasupata sect is indeed the most likely source of Balinese mysticism, it seems to offer an intriguing lead.
Contrarily to Stephen, anthropologist Wiener (1995, p. 214) defined the kanda

mpat as most indigenous of spirits, since spirit siblings do not play a role in
either Hinduism or Islam; yet, she acknowledged that they are assimilated in
texts to the same magical discourse as Islamic spirits and Hindu gods. Parker
(2003, p. 199200), referring to an interesting parallel reported in a study on
personhood in the societies of the Kei islands of Eastern Indonesia,30 voices the
possibility that the belief in spiritual birth-siblings could be pan-Indonesian. This
view is also advanced by Headley (2004, pp. 1234), who in a section of his Javafocused study Durgas Mosque takes up a comparative approach, on the ground
that certain cultural comparisons with Bali are useful, presenting the Javanese
data against a clearer background (p. 123). This state of affairs leads Headley
to make some illuminating observations on the dynamics behind the construction of such multi-layered Javanese motif as the pancakusika and related mystical
part, introduced to the island from elsewhere, and there(after) transformed,

restated, and performed in many ways. My analysis purports to understand how
the synthesis of heterogeneous cultural elements that is often regarded as an
epitome of the syncretic and inclusive character of Balinese and Indonesian
culture has been historically constructed.
The first to suggest a possible Indic origin of the Balinese kanda mpat in their
pentadic form was Weck, on the basis of the explicit links with the five elements
made in Old Javanese sources such as Tutur Pancamah@bh+ta, etc.28 More detailed
and cogent correspondences with other Indic pentads29 advanced in Balinese
lontars were suggested by Hooykaas, who meticulously listed and reconstructed
the narratives around the origin of the kanda mpat and he motif of the kanda mpat
when discussing the apparent parallels or convergences between South Asian
Tantric and Balinese modus cogitandi. Stephen (2005, p. 97) manifests her perplexity
about this Indic-yet-indigenous theme when noting that [t]wo outstanding features of Balinese mysticism seem absent in current studies of Indian Tantrismthe
concept of rwa bhineda and kanda mpatalthough both are expressed in words of
Sanskrit origin. Further:
Andrea Acri
13
siblingsand perhaps, one might say, Javanese culture tout-court. Headley affirms that
The advent of Indian religions to the archipelago brought the nomenclature of
a pantheon, but as in the case of the five seers [. . .] little more. With the four
siblings an Austronesian myth and polythetic classification are at work here.
[. . .] The anthropomorphic identification of parts of the world with parts of the
body or of siblingship did not await the advent of Samkhya philosophy from
India to be used in Java and Bali.
According to Headley, an ancestral pattern of classificatory siblingship in Western

Austronesian societiesin which personhood is mainly relational, the internal
world is populated by invisible entities and related to the invisible cosmos, and
bodily parts are identified with external realiais attested through the central
section of the Indonesian archipelago, and has resisted both Hinduisation and
Islamisation.31 The similarities between Java and Bali are striking insofar as the
siblings of ones birth are called Kanda, and, as in Bali, embody Kala in their
nefarious forms. Referring to Gondas (1972, p. 179) analysis of the Old Javanese
and Sanskrit word k@>na cluster, Headley observes that the mystical siblings are
understood in both areas as sections of the Ego.32 He further points out that in
Javanese lore the afterbirth is considered ones younger sibling, and the amniotic
fluid ones elder; the four elder siblings have remained in Javanese popular consciousness till today (p. 126, 6669);33 in Javanic mystical literature, the fivefold
Soul or Self (@tman) had been related to the five mythological seers (kusika) who
have since disappeared from the Javanese scene, but who once reigned over the
above fivefold extensions of the person by their classifications of the cosmos (pp.
126 and 131, note 20). As a pentad, the pancakusika are identified with other series
of five in Javanese Primbon-Pawukon texts for numerology and prognostication;
but there only the ego appears, whereas its four younger siblings are passed over
in silence (p. 125).
Judging from the extant Old Javanese textual evidence, the pancakusika have
apparently enjoyed a long history in Java and Baliand even beyond, for they are
mentioned in a (Middle-)Malay inscription from Lampung, Sumatra,34 while a
Malay invocation speaks of the four children of Siva who dwell at the corners
of the world (Winstedt, 1961, p. 146). In Java, the pentad appears in the opening
in Old Javanese charters from the 9th century onwards, in Old Javanese literature
through the 16th century,35 as well as in a number of contemporary Old Sundanese
texts. Memory of P@tanjala, and seemingly also his four brothers, has survived in
Middle- and Modern-Javanese literature composed, on the basis of earlier materials, after the coming of Islam on the island.36 The popularity of the pancakusika in
the Sundanese-speaking part of Java is suggested by their occurrence in texts
recovered from pre-17th century manuscripts from West Java, such as the Old
Javanese San Hyan Hayu,37 the Old Javanese prose version of the Buddhist
14
Pancakusika: a localised Indic Saiva myth?

In this section, I will corroborate with textual evidence the hypothesis, only hinted
at but never elaborated in detail by previous scholars, that the Indo-Nusantarian
theme of the pancakusika or pancarXi directly stems from a significant narrative or
foundational myth of early Saivism known from South Asian Sanskrit sources,
which treats about the revelation of Saiva (P@supata) religion in historical times by
the Lord through His avatar to a series of human teachers.
The first scholar to recognise the pancakusika as a series of possible Indic origin
was Goris (1931, p. 42), who fleetingly linked these five to an alleged Indian series
of five disciples of Siva known as Kusika, G@rgya, Mitra, Kaurasya (sic), and
Patanjala. It was Sarkar (1967, p. 641) who updated Goris account with more
reliable data from Sanskrit sources, noting that the names of the first four pancakusika corresponded to those of the four traditional masters of P@supata Saivism
known from the Indian Subcontinent, who were themselves regarded to be the
disciples of the primeval guru Lakulasa, the mythical promulgator of P@nc@rthika
P@supata scriptures.42 Hooykaas (1974, pp. 12932), on the basis of Sarkars note,
compiled a list of the extant attestations of the four P@supata teachers in Sanskrit
epigraphic sources that were reported by previous Indian scholars, yet without
advancing any hypothesis about their transfer to Nusantara, and without discussing the remarkable transformation of Lakulasa into P@tanjala eitherinsofar as he
Kunjarakar>a tale,38 the Old Sundanese Siksa Kandan KarQsian,39 the Old Sundanese
(pseudo-)historical chronicle Carita Parahyanan,40 and in the Old Sundanese account of the travels of the Sundanese Saiva hermit Buj@nga Manik, where we
find an interesting mention of a sakakala of P@tanjala near Mount Bulistir, i.e. a
memorial object or place in honour of that character.41
The widespread mention of the pancakusika in sources from a vast geographical
area over about a thousand years attests to the importance this pentad must once
have had in religious ideology and ritual systems of the Archipelago and beyond.
Given the similarities between the two motifs in Java and Bali, it is hardly plausible
to opine that we are witnessing an instance of cultural convergence, but rather to
the independent survival of a common, and remarkably early, constellation of
themes, of possibly heterogeneous origin, which at a certain point of history
became paradigmatic parts of a religious ideology encompassing meaningful correspondences playing on different levels of discourses. It may be suggested that,
either in Java or, more probably, in Bali, the pentad of the pancakusika came to be
internalised and subjectivised, becoming identified with the homologous (preexisting?) pentad of the kanda mpat. Whereas in Java the memory of the pancakusika eventually faded away under the sway of Islamisation, and traces of the kanda
mpat barely survived in a modified fashion, both series continued to thrive in Bali,
where they were reconfigured to constitute an interface of primary importance for
the grasping of the multi-layered Balinese (Saiva) universe.
Andrea Acri
15
is the last, yet foremost of the five kusika-siblings, P@tanjala would appear to have
taken the role of Lakulasa as the most prominent character of the pentad.
A convincing hypothesis concerning the above issues has been advanced by
Sanderson (200304, p. 3745), according to whom in the subcontinent these
four disciples are remembered as the originators of the four teaching lineages
(gotra) of the P@nc@rthika P@supatas and commonly seated around him in sculptural representations.43 To Sanderson, the P@supata connection of the Old
Javanese pancarXis is also suggested by the association of the pentad with the
Javanese OXi sect, a class of priests and ascetics to be distinguished from both
the Saivas (i.e. Saiddh@ntikas) and the Buddhists. These OXi have been regarded by
Sanderson (200304, p. 376) to have their Balinese alter-egos in the OXi Bhuj@nga or
Senguhu priests, representing local descendants of the P@supatas, who held a
subaltern position and were mostly active away from centres of worldly and religious authority.44 Sanderson has further argued that, given the absence of other
suitable candidates to cover the role of a P@supata master in this context,45
P@tanjala could be an attempt to make sense of a corrupted form of the original
Sanskrit compound patanjala (i.e. pata: jala), he who drank the waters, which
would be an epithet of Agastya referring to the mythological episode of his drinking of the ocean. As a matter of fact, no better candidate than Agastya can be
imagined to fit into the list for, if in the Northern part of the Subcontinent
Lakulasa was considered as the first and most prominent teacher and an incarnation of the Lord Siva himself, the sage Agastya was the ?diguru of the Dravidian
South (Filliozat 1967, p. 447).46 Being the cultural hero who introduced
Brahmanism, he holds a prominent position in the traditional accounts of the
diffusion of Saivism in the Tamil country. For instance, the Old Tamil Saiva
poem Tirumantiram by Tirumular (2.1.12) mentions Agastya, also called the
Muni of the North, as the first hero who transmitted Saivism to the South.
According to Filliozat, this figure is to be connected with the introduction of
Brahmanism in Southeast Asia too.
Whereas in Java Agastya bears a position of great prominence in iconography,
becoming a sort of quintessential Brahman bearing the attributes of the OXi group,
neither textual occurrences of the name Lakulasa nor iconographic representations
have been found in the archipelago thus far. This suggests that the figure was
unknown there or, in any case, never achieved a wide popularity.47 This state of
affairs implies that Lakulasa, who became a prominent figure only in the
Northwestern part of the Subcontinent from the 6th century onwards (cf.
Acharya 2005, p. 218), was replaced by the more familiar Southern figure of
Agastya/*Patanjala in order to enhance the status of the doctrine. It is possible
that this shift occurred in Java, or that there already existed an independent
P@supata tradition in the Southern part of the Subcontinent, which was responsible for the diffusion of P@supatism in Java.
In my investigations of Old Javanese textual sources, I have been looking for
additional evidence in support of the P@supata link suggested by the scholars
16
mentioned above. This evidence I have found in the Dharma P@tanjala, a section of
which constituted one of the six best sources of information on the kanda mpat/
pancakusika presented by Hooykaas (1974). The portion of the text in question
contains, I argue, an apparently P@supata narrative that might very well represent
a missing link for the reconstruction of the original meaning and significance of
the pancakusika in the earliest stage of the Javano-Balinese Saiva ideology.
The testimony of the Dharma P@tanjala
The Dharma P@tanjala is a speculative Saiva scripture in Old Javanese, with a few
interspersed Sanskrit verses, which has survived to us through a codex unicus from
West Java bearing a colophon dated 1469 AD. In spite of its uniquely Javanese
pedigree, the text shares many doctrinal points and formal features with two other
Saiva scriptures in Old Javanese and Sanskrit belonging to the Tattva genre,
namely the VPhaspatitattva, preserved only in manuscripts from Bali, and the
Tattvajn@na, preserved in manuscripts from both Bali and Java (cf. Acri 2011a,
pp. 810). Hooykaas (1974, pp. 166170) presented, with minimal or no commentary at all, an edition and translation of folios 45r48v of the Dharma P@tanjala
only a fraction of the entire treatise of 89 folios, but one that according to him was
relevant to the motif of the pancakusika, and also testified to the early existence of
the terrifying ash-smearing P@supatas in Java as well as of different methods of
care for the dead in that island.
My reading of the Dharma P@tanjala has led me to the conclusion that the relevant portion of the text appears to have been borrowed by the author from an
earlier, arguably P@supata, source, and integrated into the treatise as a mythological narrative alongside a Saiddh@ntika narrative of the marriage of Siva and the
birth of Kum@ra. The figure of P@tanjala was perceived to be important enough to
inspire the title of the text;48 furthermore, the narrative around this character and
his four brothers appears to provide an explanation to a crucial point of Saiva
doctrine, namely the theophany of the Lord as a supernatural, and yet incarnated
and visible, being.49 Thus P@tanjala, and the pancakusika as a whole, would seem to
represent a taxonomical link between God and Man, constituting an embodied and
personalyet at the same time supernaturalmanifestation of that inconceivable
divine being.
The section on the pancakusika is introduced in the Dharma P@tanjala by a question of Kum@ra, son and interlocutor of Siva in the text, expressing disconcert over
the existence of an embodiment of the Lord (bhab@ra) in the worldly cycle of
rebirth (p. 276.12). The Lord replies that His incarnations were various; yet, the
Lord Supreme Cause (bhab@ra paramak@ra>a) cannot be born as a normal incarnated
human beingHe who takes a body is the Lord in His sakalaniXkala (i.e. Sad@siva)
aspect, and not the Supreme Cause, which amounts to the aspect that is the
param@rtha, and hence niXkala, or ever untainted highest principle (sad@sauca,
p. 282.8).50 A similar concern about the status of the Lord as incarnated or
Andrea Acri
17
manifested on earth is detectable in a Sanskrit P@supata source, Kau>ninyas

commentary Panc@rthabh@Xya to the P@supatas+tra. Kau>ninya, while commenting
on s+tra 1.40, sadyo j@ta: prapady@mi I bow to the ever unborn, justifies the
scriptural authority stating that the Lord, being eternal and beginningless, is not
born like a human soul; for such a birth implies having stain (anjana), and God is
free from it. To him, the fact that the Lord is taught to have assumed earthly
incarnations constitutes no contradiction, for in Panc@rthabh@Xya ad 1.1 he states
that, on account of His ability to assume any form He wishes (k@mitva) and of
being unborn (aj@tatva), the Lord, when He took a human form, entered the
body of a Brahman, descending on this earth at K@y@vatara>a manuXyar+pa
bhagav@n br@hma>ak@yam @sth@ya k@y@vatara>e avatar>a iti (p. 3.1617). The crucial
point is thus that the Lord is not born from a female womb like a common
human beinga point that is also made by the Dharma P@tanjala (p. 276.1214, see
infra).
The Dharma P@tanjala s account of the Lords former worldly incarnations (or
divine manifestations) begins by tracing His genealogical pedigree: having experienced a series of incarnations as yogin, he becomes a yogasvara for a thousand
years, having expired which He is transferred to heaven and given the name of
Nalalohita; He then marries Sata, the daughter of DakXa; Sata dies, and He again
becomes a leader among yogins, fervid in his practice. He dies and is reborn as an
incarnation of the Lord, not from sperm and blood but from the yoga of the Lord
(276.412). Since the Lord is speaking in the first person, He is probably referring
to the form He assumed as teacher of the scriptures in the world, having His abode
on the mount Kail@sa. The passage is apparently relating about the Lords incarnations that occurred prior to the one He is attributed in the historical horizon of
events of the text.51
Having thus related His death and second incarnation (276.412), the Lord
continues His account by revealing that He is the last of five brothers, the pancarXi,
bearing the name P@tanjala. The theme of the pancarXi does not figure in the
Pur@>ic accounts of the legend of Sata and Siva, where the common sequel to
the story is the burning of K@ma, the marriage with P@rvata and the killing of
the demon T@raka. A version of this legend is indeed narrated in the Dharma
P@tanjala, immediately after the conclusion of the section devoted to the pancarXi
(276.13278.20)an arrangement betraying a cut-and-paste operation by the
author, who inserted the P@supata narrative in between the common mythologemes of Nalalohita-DakXa-Sata and Nalarudraka-K@ma-P@rvata. Although the names
of the characters mentioned in the Old Javanese text do not entirely correspond to
those featuring in the Sanskrit accounts, the main elements of the myth are largely
overlapping.52 This story is commonly narrated in the Pur@>as, but it is not found
in Sanskrit Saiva Tantras. The legend, however, occurs in the Sanskrit-Old Javanese
VPhaspatitattva (14.2732), where Siva is explicitly defined as Sraka>bhawho is
therefore likely to be the unnamed form of Siva featuring in the Dharma
P@tanjala s account.
18
Let us now turn to the motif of the incarnation of Siva as the Lord and yogasvara
treated in the continuation of the passage of the Dharma P@tanjala related supra
(p. 17) . There a sudden change of subject, from the first person singular to the first
person plural, occurs:
In this passage the Lordspeaking through his avatar P@tanjalaappears to refer

to Himself as a collective manifestation of His five children, the pancarXi. What
follows constitutes the longest and most exhaustive textual account on the
pancarXi/pancakusika I have found in Old Javanese literature. It starts by describing
how the five brothers, summoned by the Lord, have to accomplish the task of
performing His funerary rites and cremating His body after His death, which
occurs shortly afterwards.
Witnessed by the regents of the ten directions, each one of them performs their
respective tasks: Kusika buries the corpse of the Lord of the directions; Garga
unearths it and throws it into a river; KuruXya builds a tower for the cremation
ceremony; Maitri cremates the corpse; P@tanjala rubs the ashes on himself.
P@tanjala then is transfigured into the Lord:
When it had already been burnt down, turned into ashes, all of them left. I was
left behind alone, to gather up the ashes of the Lord. His ashes were taken by
me, because of my devotion toward the teacher. That is the reason why I
rubbed the ashes on my body, and I carried the remainder in my hands. Not
long afterwards, my appearance as P@tanjala vanished: [I assumed] the same
aspect which the Lord had in the past, when He was alive, three eyed and four
armed. A jewel served as womb. Likewise was the form that I obtained. All the
divine beings came to worship me [. . .] (276.17278.18)
The enigmatic section described above details a sort of magical rite, through
which the corpse of the Lord comes to life again in a transfigured form. The
various stages and procedures to which the Lords corpse is submitted appear to
fulfill a special ritual procedure. In fact, each of the three types of funeral procedures mentioned in this passage are known to the AnteXbividhi, an early L@kula
P@supata manual describing the last rite of persons initiated in the order, such as
householders, ascetics (s@dhaka) or masters (@c@rya).53 The AnteXbividhi seemingly
represents the only known Saiva source that describes all three types of ritual;
moreover, it prefers the former two to cremation, the usual rite prescribed in later
But [we] were not born from sperm and blood: we were born from the yoga of
our Lord, for we were five brothers. Our names, one by one: Kusika was the
eldest, then followed Garga with Maitri, [then] KuruXya. Me, P@tanjala is my
name, the youngest son among the Five Sages. I remembered about the state
of leader among yogins, that is the reason why I worshiped the Lord.
(276.1417)
Andrea Acri
19
Saiddh@ntika texts.54 The AnteXbividhi (verse 23) prescribes that two P@supata officiants separately perform parallel rituals on the corpse, which is only then ready
to be buried, disposed in a river, or cremated. Albeit not identical, the procedure
described in the Sanskrit text is remindful of the one indicated in the Dharma
P@tanjala. The outstanding character of the body of the deceased, i.e. Siva as
Nalalohita, and the purpose of the ritual, i.e. bringing Him to life again as
Sraka>bha (through the transfiguration of P@tanjala), may justify the fact that
the Old Javanese text prescribes the performance of all these three funerary
rites. It may also be noted that presence of the ten directional deities or
Lokap@las, headed by Brahm@, occurs in the accounts of the earthly birth of
divine characterscompare the worship of the new-born Buddha by the
Lokap@las described in Buddhist hagiographies.
Now, those who are familiar with the myth of Lakulasa in Sanskrit sources will
note the presence of the same burial ambience as well as the theme of the
incarnation of Siva-Pasupati as an ash-smeared divine master at the head of
four disciples.55 Bakker (2000, p. 13) relates the legend of the P@supata guru
Somasarman found in the Malhar Plates and in the early Skandapur@>a, where
the play of words may allude to Soma as a name of Siva and the transfiguration
undergone by Lakulasa in the initiation ritual, which, when he underwent the
anointment with ashes, made him shine like the moon. Although the process of
incarnation is nowhere described in detail and certain minor elements in the
accounts vary, the main motif of Sivas incarnation remains the same.56 The presence of ashes (smeared on Lakulasas, as well as P@tanjalas, body) is a recurrent
feature too. Further, it is important to recall that in Panc@rthabh@Xya ad s+tra 1.1
Lakulasa is never mentioned, whereas Kusikas newly incarnated master is referred
to as bhagavant the Lord; this details finds a correspondence in the Dharma
P@tanjala, which simply speaks of bhab@ra; it is only in the mythological account
following thereafter, supported by (in)dependent textual evidence found in the
VPhaspatitattva (14.2633), that we can infer that the form of the Lord intended in
the passage is Sraka>bha.57 Sraka>bha was incorporated into the scriptures of the
Saiva Mantram@rga, where he usually appears in the role of the Guru, living on the
peak of the Kail@sa, who is responsible for the diffusion of the Saiva knowledge
down to earth, first to the Gods and sages, and then to human beings.
The section of the Old Javanese text describing the Lords former incarnations
shows a composite structure that, I believe, was the result of a cut-and-paste
operation by the author of the Dharma P@tanjala. Now, for what reason did he
feel the need to insert the P@supata account between the two contiguous
Pur@>ic myths of Nalalohita-DakXa-Sata and of Nalarudraka-K@ma-P@rvata?
A possible answer might be found in his eclectic approach, on account of which
the harmonisation of a P@supata and Saiva Pur@>ic myth would have been deemed
desirable.
Given the evident structural convergences that can be detected in the Sanskrit
and Old Javanese accounts, it may be argued that we are dealing with different
20
Pancakusika and Kanda Mpat: between taxonomy and salvation

On the basis of the Dharma P@tanjala s account, I have offered cogent evidence in
support of the hypothesis that the pancakusika represent a Javanese reconfiguration of an in origin Sanskritic P@supata myth narrating about the supernatural
transmission of Saiva doctrine to mankind through Lakulasa, himself an avatar of
Siva. To sum up: the four (semi-)historical masters headed by Lakulasa, mentioned
in Northern Indian Sanskrit epigraphic documents and textual sources, spread
before the 9th century to Java and Bali. There the four disciples of Lakulasa
became the four older siblings of P@tanjala; the five were elevated to the status
of (semi-)divine beings, being the four children of the Lord Siva, headed by the
fifth, P@tanjala, apparently corresponding to Lakulasa insofar as avatar of Siva in
His Sraka>bha form. Then, at a certain historical time, either in Java or Bali, to each
of the pancakusika one of the five kanda mpat was equatedbeing at once a manifestation, alter-ego, and descendant thereof. The ensuing discourse, or masternarrative, may thus be regarded as a synthesis between a Sanskritic theme, i.e. the
descent of revelation from the timeless divine dimension to human time-andplace through a line of masters, and a Western Austronesian cognatic pattern of
personhood, i.e. the concept of a mystical twin at birth, symbolised mainly
through the placenta, which still retains importance in Javanese, Balinese, and
otherwise Austronesian cultures. The indigenous concept of a mystical twin,
under the influence of Saiva teachings, needed to be expanded to a concept of
the self as a pentad; the mystical import of the placenta alone was then elaborated
into four siblings to match Saiva pentadsin the specific, the pancakusika.59 The
concept of four invisible siblings possessed by each individual, and its related
practices, eventually developed into an internalised cult encompassing a Saiva
ideology of salvation.
versions of an early P@supata motif that developed independently in different

areas of the Subcontinent and in the Archipelago. As noted by Bakker (2007,
pp. 23) with respect to the South Asian Saiva traditions, the idea of a guru
with four pupils named L@guni/L@kulin or Lakulasa seems to be an example of
invention of tradition, which was introduced for reasons of legitimation. Just as
Lakulasa holds a superior status insofar as he is the incarnation of Siva, who in that
guise first promulgated the P@supata doctrine, so P@tanjala is the hierarchically
highest character of the Nusantarian pentad of the pancakusika, precisely by virtue
of his having become the Lords transfiguration. The substitution of Lakulasa with
P@tanjala, as I have argued above, may be a Javanese invention of tradition, developed on the basis of an earlier common source. Similarly, the pancarXi, which
reflect the original status of the pentad as being formed by human teachers,58
were transformed into the pancakusika brothers, intended as children of the Lord.
The Dharma P@tanjalas account appears to document the shift from one series to
the other as it presents both ideas.
Andrea Acri
21
One may ask, how a P@supata narrative around the revelation and transmission
to humanity of a great tradition such as Saivism, carried through Sanskrit texts
that are the preserve of the Brahmanical elites, became embedded in the little
tradition of popular belief and orthopraxis of Balinese commoners? In other
words, what such two heterogeneous themes had in common to produce one of
the most telling cases of cultural convergence between Sanskritic and Western
Austronesian traditions? The answer, I believe, lies in the fact that at the core of
both traditions lies an epistemic system of categorisation of the internal and external universe through related series of visible and invisible interfaceshuman,
physical, animal, divinewhich stand in meaningful relation to the individual, and
provide the links to bridge different levels of reality.
This ideology is reflected in the very name of the siblings, kanda (Sanskrit/Old
Javanese k@>na), literally part, portion, or branch (of a stem or trunk). On the
one hand, k@>na refers to the portions or branches that constitute the biological
appendices of the fetus first, and the portions of the physical body (organs,
bodily constituents, basic elements) after; on the other, it is semantically close
to the Sanskrit a:sa share, portion, part, and as such it may refer to the visible
counterpart (on both human and spiritual level) of the Lord that each and every
human being is regarded to be in potentiality. According to the Dharma P@tanjala,
insofar as he has become a yogasvara, thereby realising his true nature, P@tanjala is
the transfigured visible counterpart of Siva as the universal teacher Sraka>bhaan
Indic idea derived from the P@supata myth of the incarnation of Siva as the master
Lakulasa. The transfiguration or sublimation of P@tanjala into the Lord finds a
Balinese counterpart in the belief in the transfiguration of the individual Self
himself identified with the fifth among the kanda mpatas the Lord, occurring
when one realises his fundamental identity with Him. This is, again, an Indic idea,
for in both the P@supata and Saiddh@ntika tradition each devotee ideally aimed at
becoming a siv@:sa, at once a devotee of Siva and a visible portion/manifestation
of Siva.60
As we have seen in the Dharma P@tanjala (276.1317), the pancakusika, being the
Lords children, are regarded as His collective embodiment, viz. His portions or
branches.61 Just like the pancakusika are at once children and manifestations or
extensions of the Supreme Lord Siva, so the kanda mpat are at once portions,
extensions, and counterparts of the individual, in both his bodily and subtle Egoic
form. The individual is in his turn also regarded to be a portion or counterpart of
his ancestors, who are symbolised by, or rather embodied in, the kanda mpat.62
In both the pancakusika and kanda mpat series, we find the same interesting pattern of inversion: we would expect the eldest sibling in both pentadsAngapati and
Kusika, respectivelyto be given the utmost importance, but this is not so. Just as
the last-bornthe individualholds the most prominent position with respect to
his siblings the kanda mpat, so the last-born P@tanjalaa transfiguration of Siva
holds the most prominent position with respect to his four elder siblings. In the case
of the kanda mpat, this inversion is the reversal that the last-born undergoes in the
22
Conclusion
My analysis suggests that the motif of the kanda mpat represents neither a
Sanskritic tradition, nor an exclusively Balinese (or Javano-Balinese) embedded
manifestation of popular religion and folklore, let alone a Western Austronesian
ancestral pattern of siblingship, but rather a trans-regional synthesis or convergence between an originally Indic theme and an indigenous conception of personhood. The ensuing system has survived and reshaped itself in Bali up to nowadays
as an internalised cult framing the identity of Balinese individuals, providing answers to the origin and end of personhood, and preaching liberation as a mystical
unity of the Self with the Lord.64 So powerful as it is, it has ended up encompassing
intellectual, psycho-physical, and practical aspects of Balinese religiosity. This
provides further strength to the realisation that in Bali it is often difficult, if
not impossible, to divorce the popular and performed dimension of religion
from the learned and textual, so that the study of the high culture of the
Brahmana priests cannot be separated or discounted from the appreciation of
the everyday dimension of religion. The motif of the pancakusika/kanda mpat
exemplifies just how permeable and porous are the boundaries between great
and little tradition in Bali, where lay actors in the domain of belief, ritual, mysticism, the visual, and performed arts, appear to have interiorised elements from
the textual tradition of the elites, i.e. the detainers of expert knowledge.
My final point is that, in order to access a deeper level of (epist)emic structure of
Balinese culture and religion than that offered by empirical observation, resort
should be made to written texts, however unrelated to everyday life they might
seem. These texts, be they Old Javanese treatises of ancient times or the modern
pamphlets in Indonesian on sale in Balinese bookshops, are regarded as normative
and, as in the case of Old Javanese texts, as the ultimate sources of truth. As such,
they must be made object of investigation, if anything else to check whether they
accord with reality, and whether they help us elucidate aspects of seemingly disconnected practices and performances that would otherwise remain obscure. As I
hope to have shown in this contribution, it is only through the texts that one can
fully unfold, disentangle and unveil the logic behind the pancakusika/kanda mpat,
relation with his four elder brothers after his birth and through adolescence and
adulthood: ideally, the hollow centre that is the fifth sibling at birth gradually
realises his own potential, through a process of refinement and control over his
lower instincts, and becomes the greatest, taking full control of the four older
brothers (cf. Ottino 2000, p. 1579).63 This reversal was explained by one of
Ottinos informants as the last-born is the smallest, but has the potential to
become the greatest. As we have seen above, this appears to be exactly the point
made by the Dharma P@tanjala s account of the pancakusikaalthough P@tanjala is
the youngest, he is a yogasvara, and thus he who will become the embodiment of
the Lord on earth.
Andrea Acri
23
which constitutes a classificatory system of analogies serving as a powerful epistemic tool to make sense of the individual, the world, and the origin and end of
the One and the Many.
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Andrea Acri
25
Notes
1 Cf. Zoetmulder (1982, p. 789) s.v. kanda: a single joint of the stalk or stem of a plant
[. . .]; any part or portion (from Sanskrit k@>na), and pat: four (in Balinese and
Indonesian empat or mpat), hence literally the four parts or segment of a stem or
trunk. An alternative etymology is suggested by Hooykaas (1974, p. 93), who derives
it from the Malay-Indonesian ka(n), kaka(n), ka-nda, older brother/sister/sibling.
Both etymologies may be equally true, as dynamics of linguistic and semantic
homologisation may be at work here besides the virtually unlimited
possibilities of folk etymology both the Javano-Balinese and Sanskritic traditions
were fond of.
2 That is, besides a relevant section of the Old Javanese text Dharma P@tanjala
(cf. infra, pp. 1620), which I have recently edited and translated into English in
its entirety (cf. Acri 2011a).
3 Cf. Hooykaas (1973, pp. 1819) illuminating comments in this respect: The repeated
mentioning of different kinds of priests might have suggested that they only are the
active part of society in matters of religion and that the ordinary people, the
laymen, are merely passive. But this is far from reality. A good motherand few
Balinese girls escape motherhood or would aspire to that situationis aware of the
kanda mpat. Compare Parker 2003, p. 185, note 14: Before she begins breast-feeding,
a new mother expresses a few drops of breast milk onto the ground to feed the new
babys kanda mpat.
4 Cf. Hooykaas 1973, p. 20: As the rituals to be performed are aiming at the welfare of
the young baby or the child, as much as possible the help of a priest is invoked by
the loving parents, as a rule a pamangku. There is birth and the falling off of the
umbilical cord and the celebration of having reached the age of seven plus five days;
at none of these (and the following) days the parents will forget the offerings to the
childs four elder brothers or sisters, the kanda mpat; [. . .] in Bali various stages of
human development are accompanied by priestly activities because they are said to
be religious duties. Superfluous to say that at any of the occasions one set of
offerings is destined for the kanda mpat. Hooykaas (1974, pp. 978), referring to
Mershons (1971) observations in 1930s Bali, in which the importance of the kanda
mpat in life-cycle rituals is stressed at every corner, mentions the existence of no
less than seven rituals held for children during their development, in all of which
invocations to the kanda mpat play a role. Parker (2003, p. 185) notes: When the
baby is 105 days old, the principal ceremony attached to birth is held (the nelubulanin, the three-month ceremony): this is a large social celebration of a successful
birth and contrasts with the actual birth which is barely ritualized; [. . .] The
Balinese have considerable feelings of affection for their elder sibling guardians
and routinely make offerings to them at life-cycle ceremonies. Contrast the comment made in this regard by Ottino (2000, p. 156), according to whom the performance of a particular ritual, the nelubulanin, aiming at securing the kanda mpat to the
body of a young person, or at any time after a recovery from an illness or accident,
appears to be extremely rare today and I could not find anyone who had witnessed
it personally. However there is a strong possibility that it may have been part of the
ritual practices of the past, when the kanda mpat occupied a larger role in peoples
everyday life.
26
5 Cf. Parker (2003, p. 185, note 14): Before eating, many people put aside a small
portion of rice for their siblings; [. . .] before embarking upon a difficult feat, or
even before jumping into a river to bathe, children may address their elder siblings,
sometimes just attending to them and sometimes asking for help or protection.
A series of popular rituals to be carried out in adulthood, prescribing offerings for
the kanda mpat to be placed in symbolic places of Balinese households, is described
by Ottino (2000, pp. 15053), who also stresses the high degree of importance they
(i.e. the kanda mpat) play in Balinese existence (p. 150, fn. 24). Contrast Wiener
(1995, p. 214), according to whom outside of the context of the rites of passage,
most Balinese ignore the kanda mpat.
6 Cf. Hooykaas (1973, p. 22): The first cremation is not the end of the ritual for the
dead. At least a second one should follow, after twelve days. It may last years before
the expensive last one is held, at which then not only the soul is granted its final
liberation but at which its kanda mpat share the same privilege; and 1974, p. 2: In
1937 at the court of Karang AsQm at the occasion of the last stage of care of the
dead, called mQmukur [. . .] there was one bukur for the kanda mpat. To the author
(1974, p. 97) this state of affairs would suggest the nearness to the heart of the
traditional Balinese of the forbears and the Four Elder Brothers/Sister as objects of
worship.
7 This tripartition has to be intended not only in a strictly ontological sense but also
epistemological and mystical, revolving around the belief that the many layers of
reality (tattva, also truth), and especially the upper ones, are accessible to everyone, yet in different ways according to their own class, social status, intellectual
standing, and spiritual development.
8 Several variants are detailed by Hooykaas (1974, pp. 8592, 989, 115).
9 These denominations follow the words kanda mpat in the titles of four respective
treatises, or rather categories of treatises; cf. Hooykaas (1974, p. 176), and infra, p. 8
and endnotes 1921.
10 Cf. Hooykaas 1974, pp. 12. As such, the kanda mpat are portrayed in a number of
magical drawings.
11 Cf. Stephen (2005, pp. 389, 456); Ottino (2000, pp. 13031); Parker (2003, p. 186).
12 Regarding the category of dalangs, Hooykaas (1974, p. 117) reports an interesting
account by his ex-students Mark and Angela Hobart, relating the following: We
found the Balinese secretive and closed off when it came to talking about the kanda
mpat. Obviously, it is a charged subject on which they do not wish to divulge
knowledge. All the information we received was only obtained after well over a
year in the field and having gained the confidence of our informants. [. . .] all
dalangs with whom we talked considered the kanda mpat to be of great importance
[. . .].
13 In the veritable forest of texts that is the corpus of medical, psycho-physiological,
and mystical works of the balians studied by Weck, Chief Medical Officer in Bali in
the 1930s, the kanda mpat feature widely (cf. esp. Weck 1976, pp. 5262).
14 Perhaps greater than ever before, as whatever kind of kanda mpat-related discourses
and practices are perceived to be an integral part of traditional Balinese cultural
and religious heritage, and as such celebrated by the recent revival movement of
Ajeg Bali.
Andrea Acri
27
15 Cf. Stephen (2005, pp. 75), Ottino (2000, pp. 13031), Wiener (1995, pp. 2134).
16 Viz. Sadyoj@ta, B@madeva (V@madeva), TatpuruXa, Aghora, and `s@na, respectively,
which are invoked at the end of the five S+tras constituting the Sanskrit
P@supatas+tra. The five syllables form the (panca)brahmamantra, which is especially
important in P@supata Saivism, but which survives in the extended mantric lore of
Saiddh@ntika Saivism.
17 As exceptions, Ottino lists Mershon 1971 and 1972 (actually 1970 and 1971, cf. my
bibliography), Connor 1982, and Lovrics dissertation (not accessible to me) Rhetoric
and Reality (1987). The relatively scant attention paid by anthropologists to the
kanda mpat is indeed remarkable. A telling example of deafening silence is the
(in other respects excellent) study Gods, people, spirits and witches: The Balinese
system of person definition by Howe (1984), which does not contain even a single
mention of the kanda mpat; the same consideration applies to Geertzs Person, Time,
and Conduct in Bali (cf. Geertz 1973, pp. 360411).
18 Examples of such publications are listed in Hooykaas (1974, pp. 1258, 15860).
19 The titles of all these booklets are preceded by the words Tuntunan Meditasi
(instructions for meditation on); they include, e.g. Kanda Pat Rare (III), Kanda Pat
Sari (IV), Kanda Pat Catur Sanak (V), Kanda Pat Madu Muka (VII), Kanda Pat Prasanak
(X), etc.
20 Such as, e.g. Kanda Empat (Dewa, Bhuta, Lare, Sari) by (Jro Mangku) Wayan Genderi
and (Jro Mangku) Wyn Artana (2011).
21 Apart from Nantras booklets mentioned above, cf. Pengobatan Alternatif Sapta Kanda
Empat (!) by Pan Putu Budihartini (2001), with many magical drawings; the three
books by I Wayan Yendra (alias Mangku Alit Pekandelan), Kanda Empat Rare,
Mewujudkan Keluarga Bahagia Selamat Sekala-Niskala (2010), Kanda Empat Dewa,
Manusia Setengah Dewa Sakti Manderaguna (2009), Kanda Empat Bhuta, Sakti Seperti
Siluman (2008). A website devoted to the mantric techniques used to invoke the
kanda mpat and obtain supernatural powers is http://dewiportuna.wordpress.com.
22 Compare Hobart et al. (1996, p. 141); Stephen (2005).
23 The narrative related by the Pedanda is indeed found in the Pancamah@bh+ta, which
elaborates at length on the kanda mpat and their relationship to the five
Brahmanical Gods of the directions or Lokap@las (alter egos of the kanda mpat),
the five elements, and a system of prominent Balinese puras. By comparing the
actual contents of this text and the information reported by Pedanda Made Sidemen
to what Weck (1976, p. 589) relates about the Utama ning Utama, describing a
system of homologies between the kanda mpat and puras (also in their internalized
form as subtle centres of the human body), one can see that the latter text constituted one of the Pedandas sources too.
24 According to the views of informants collected by Ottino (2000, p. 155), it appears
that the kanda mpat are also connected with ones ancestors, who incarnate, as
they were, into the newborn.
25 Compare my table in p. 10; on the slight variants in the different texts, cf. Hooykaas
(1974, pp. 78, 186).
26 This kind of cultural schema or modus cogitandi, which entangles taxonomy and
salvation, was not only uniquely Balinese, but also Tantric (compare Stephen 2005,
pp. 8197). It may be useful to quote here the insightful reflections by Walter (2000,
28
28
29
30
27
p. 606): Tantra, which has been practiced in Hinduism and Buddhism for centuries,
is a set of practices based on two principles. The first is that of subtle physiology.
The body exists on a series of vibrational levels, and our physical body is the lowest
of those levels. [. . .] To understand our true naturethe goal of this yogawe must
gain control over the elements (water, air, fire, earth, and ether, that is, space) of
which we are made [. . .]. The cosmos is made up of these same elements, and the
second principle states that the structure and function of our subtle body parallels
the greater structures of the cosmos: the planets, stars, constellations, and so forth.
This second principle, sometimes referred to as a system of macrocosmic and
microcosmic correspondences, allows the yogin to escape human finitude by understanding how both his individual body and the cosmos are ruled by the same
processes.
It is perhaps no coincidence that on the cremation tower (wadah) representing the
universe, the pavilion for the kanda mpat (bale balean), with four posts symbolising
the four siblings of the deceased lying in the centre, is located right in between the
levels of heaven and earth (cf. Eiseman 1990, p. 119).
Cf. Weck (1976, pp. 53): Everything that is contained in the writings attempting to
explain the real meaning of the four siblings, in which in my opinion we can see a
native Balinese representation, is of Indic origin, which is documented in the connection with the Pancamahabhuta-teaching and the thereof related philosophical
considerations with relations to Indian mythology and mysticism (my translation
from the original German).
It may indeed be argued that the pentadic categorisation of realia is one of the most
distinctively Indic/Sanskritic features of Balinese culture. Such pervasive system of
categorisation according to pentads might stem from the Sanskritic Saiva tradition,
and in particular from its earlier P@supata strand, where they are rife. For instance,
P@nc@rthika P@supatism (as its very name implies) enumerates five topics
(panc@rtha), five aspects of practice or vidhi, five faces or limbs of the Lord, five
Brahmamantras (each one of which closes the five sections making up the
P@supatas+tra), and various other pentads (cf. the verses quoted by Kau>ninya in
Panc@rthabh@Xya ad s+tra 5.30 (p. 130, ll. 413), correlating the five stages of practice
to respectively the five l@bhas (attainments), malas (impurities), up@yas (means),
desas (places)). With reference to the occurrence of Saiva numbers in the kanda
mpat-lore, note that 108 helpers (babu, nyama bajang) accompany the four siblings in
protecting and nourishing the embryo (cf. Hobart et al. 1996, p. 110).
Cf. Barraud (1990, p. 229, note 10): After a childs birth, another relationship between a person and non-human beings is revealed. The placenta buried beneath the
house, in a coconut shell whose eyes are turned upwards, is considered the older
sibling of the child. It is as if one person was not one but double, accompanied
throughout its lifetime by its sibling. The older-younger relationship seems inherent to its constitution (like that of the house). The older sibling returns to the
earth. The Mother-Earth is said to envelop all inya. She is considered the spouse of
the god. This ceremony foreshadows the burial of a corpse at funerals, when a
person enters the category of the dead, nit, and returns to earth. There are apparent similarities with Bali, where the placenta is buried, along with what remains of
the amniotic fluid, blood, umbilical cord, and the vernix caseosa, in a yellow coconut
Andrea Acri
31
34
35
36
37
38
(a symbol of the womb?) upon which the onk@ra and other akXaras have been
inscribed, outside the doorstep of the main houseyard building (cf. Parker 2003,
p. 185; Ottino 2000, p. 154; Hooykaas 1973, p. 3; Eiseman 1990, p. 90). According to
Eiseman, one cannot overestimate the importance of the regard that a Balinese
person has for the place where his placenta is buried. Wherever he may live, that
burial spot is his true home, and he is unhappy if he is far away from it.
Further (Headley 2004, p. 128): We see that myth and ritual to bind together a
person through the flow of life from his/her foetus siblings with cosmic links has
the same role that prescriptive features of eastern Indonesian kinship occupy in
their exchange system. Compare Ottinos (2000, pp. 1278) remarks on the importance of siblingship for the shaping of the notion of personhood in Bali, where the
person is not seen as an autonomous and discrete unit, but a rich universe of
complex interactions between various dimensions of the self conceived as siblings,
Errington (1989, pp. 20710) on the view that Indonesian family could be viewed as
a succession of layers of siblings, and again Headley (2004, pp. 778) on analogous
Javanese concepts.
Compare my comments infra, pp. 2022.
Headley (2004, p. 6970) notes that for his informants, i.e. adult Javanese peasants,
their relationship with the four foetus siblings was only a question of protective
rituals to fend off the kala attacks at birth [. . .] and the lullaby prayers and offerings
which are used against them. Often mention was made only of two, not four, siblings, playing a guardian angel role throughout ones adult life: the elder brother
amniotic fluid (kakang kawah) and younger brother placenta (adik ari-ari).
Probably dating to ca. 14th15th century AD; cf. Djafar (1995).
Cf. the references in Zoetmulder (1982), s.v. pancakusika; Sanderson (200304, pp.
3756); Hooykaas (1974, pp. 13240).
Cf. Hooykaas (1974, p. 13740) and Damais (1969, pp. 1013), mainly on the 18th
century Ma>ik Maya, which indicates Prit Anjala as the regent of the North-East in
a system of directional deities analogous to that known in Bali and Java as
navasana; the North-East corresponds to the benevolent form of Siva known as
Sambhu in the navasana-system, and `s@na in the Lokap@la-system. As noted by
Hooykaas (1974, p. 138), with reference to this particular text, in Bali the NorthEast is of the same importance as the Centre. In the Konda Purwa, a Javanese text
preserved on a manuscript belonging to the Raffles collection of the India Office,
now kept at the British Library as Ms. Raffles Java 10 (dated 1815 AD) mentions
the supreme Lord San Hyan Tungal and his four children, who are evidently the
pancakusika.
The pancakusika occurs at the very beginning of the text, where a series of divine
and semi-divine (as well as demonic) figures are mentioned, namely Bhab@ra,
Bhab@ra of the past ages; Brahm@, ViX>u, `svara, Mah@deva; Kusika, Garga, Metri,
KuruXya, P@tanjala; YakXa, Pis@ca, Preta, Bh+ta, Pitara, Siva-Buda.
Cf. Hooykaas (1974, pp. 1356). The pancakusika occur in a sermon given by Vairocana
who, having described the characteristics of the fetus and its relationship with the
five elements and the five @tmans, continues by reporting the view of the Saivas, who
hold that the five are a manifestation of the five deities of the sugatas, viz. AkXobhya,
Ratnasambhava, Amit@bha, Amoghasiddhi, and Vairocana, respectively.
32
33
29
30
39 Where they are mentioned as the last characters in a list of gods and guardians of
the cardinal directions (cf. Hooykaas 1974, p. 137).
40 Where they are regarded as the five sons (pancaputra) of the r@jarXi Kandiavan or
Rahyanta of MQdan Jati (cf. Hooykaas 1974, p. 137).
41 Cf. lines 13615 (Noorduyn and Teeuw 2006, p. 270). On the possible meanings of
these obscure sakakalas mentioned in the text, which are meant to keep the memory
of various religious and royal figures, cf. pp. 1589. As the word sakakala seems to
denote some kind of physical memorial or monument, it might derive from (or be
an ex-post corruption or hybridisation of) the Sanskrit and Old Javanese sakala in
visible or material form, in person, embodied, pertaining to the world perceptible
by the senses, hence embodiment statue. But it may also be interpreted as
sakak@la S@ka[-era] time, itself related to candrasank@la (chronogram). I owe to
Pauline Lunsingh-Scheurleer (email dated 19 October 2010) some interesting considerations on the above-mentioned sakakala of P@tanjala: it could be some sculpture indicating a date. In the late Mojopahit period several sculptures were made,
that are an expression of a candrasankala, usually a strange creature with OXi turban
and pubic plaque.
42 There are, as usual, variants in the spelling of the names of the four in Old Javanese
versus Sanskrit, and even within the two languages the names vary according to the
sources: Kusika/KurXika versus Kusika/Kausika, G@rga/Garga/Garga versus G@rga/
G@rgya, Metri/Maitri/Maitreya versus Mitra/Maitri, KuruXya/PuruXya versus
KauruXya/KauruXa. The name P@tanjala appears in Old Javanese sources with the
variants PQrtanjala, PPtanjala, Pratanjala.
43 In the early Skandapur@>a (167.122125), the four are said to be emerged from the
four faces of the Lord (bhagavant). In the Eklingja stone of AD 971 (vv. 1015, cf.
Bhandarkar 1908, pp. 1667), sages (muni) like Kusika and the others (kusik@di) are
said to have manifested themselves in K@y@varoha>a, where Siva holding a lakula
had appeared before BhPgu. According to the Cintra prasasti of 1287 AD (lines 1419,
cf. Buhler 1892, pp. 2812), the four descended at K@roha>a, where God descended
in the form of Lakulasa. A discussion of textual passages on the four pupils of
Lakulasa may be found in Bisschop (2006, pp. 4450).
44 These OXi are constantly associated with the pancakusika and P@tanjala in Old
Javanese sources; cf., e.g. the Buddhist Kakavin Kunjarakar>a 23.14, equating the
five deities of the three groups (compare my note 38 supra, p. 28) ; Sutasoma 53.3,
where a comparison between Vairocana, Siva and P@tanjala is made; and the
Balinese version of the P+rvaka Bh+mi (Hooykaas 1974, pp. 1012), where the five
brothers are equated to the pancabrahmas, the five faces of Sad@sivaPPtanjala
corresponds to the highest, `s@na/Siva. The Balinese OXi Bhuj@nga and Senguhu
belong to the fourth and lowest class (s+dra), and invoke or exorcize alternative
sets of demons than those handled by the Pedanda Siva. To do so, they also use an
alternative set of texts, among which the P+rvaka Bh+mi stands out.
45 It seems rather unlikely that P@tanjala represents a corruption of the Patanjali who
authored the Yogas+tra.
46 A textual passage partially supporting this identification is P+rvak@ra>@gama
26.3cd4ab, where the sage appears, in identification with Siva, as the last and
most important member in the pentad formed by the PXis and @disaivas Kausika,
Andrea Acri
47
50
51
K@syapa, Bharadv@ja, Gautama, Agastya, who have been consecrated in the five
faces of Sad@siva (Filliozat 1967, p. 448).
Recent studies have argued that we must reappraise the figure of Lakulasa and his
connection with the P@supatas in South Asia. The early Skandapur@>a and other
P@supata-related materials have shown that there existed P@supata milieus before
the appearance of Lakulasa, for the name Lakulasa does not occur in important
P@supata sources such as the Panc@rthabh@Xya and the Mathur@ Pillar, being
unattested before the early Skandapur@>a (cf. Bakker 2000, p. 15, 2007, pp. 23;
Acharya 2005). Bakker (2007, pp. 23) further argues that Kau>ninya does not
know a teacher (incarnation) by the name of Lakulasa, but speaks only about the
Lord (bhagavant) descending in K@y@vat@ra, who initiated only one pupil, Kusika.
[. . .] At some stage of the process in which the P@supata movement was gathering
momentum, the avat@ra of Siva/Pasupati received the name L@guni/L@kulin/
Lakulasa. It became a basic assumption that served, on the one hand, to account
for the spread of several guru lineages that all claimed to go back to Sivas incarnation and, on the other hand, to unite these into one coherent religious movement. Along the same lines, Bisschop (2006, pp. 478) observes that the only
probable historical figure of the earliest stage of P@supata history is Kusika, while
identification of his teacherthe lord (bhagavant) according to Kau>ninyas
Bh@Xyaas Lakulasa was established afterwards and is therefore a later invention.
This would perhaps explain why in Java Kusika appears as the first of the pancakusikawhich owe their collective name to that very charactereven though
P@tanjala, just as Lakulasa, remains the hierarchically highest figure.
Cf. my earlier remarks in this respect (Acri 2011c, pp. 2256).
Sanskrit scriptures of the Saiva Atim@rga, i.e. the P@supata or pre-Saiddh@ntika
strand of Saivism, describe the Lord as incarnated on earth in the first P@supata
guru; the Siddh@ntatantras and other scriptures of the Mantram@rga also posit the
past existence of a bodily form of the Lord as universal master, through which He
transmitted the Saiva teachings to celestial, as well as human, beings. Since the
Saiva Tantras are almost invariably arranged in the form of dialogues between the
Lord and superhuman interlocutors, it follows that He must be provided with a
visible body and with the organ of speech in order to teach His doctrine. The
positing of an incarnated Lord does, however, entail a series of philosophical
issues that, if not properly addressed, may provide opponents with an easy argument to disprove the Saiva characterisation of the Lord as both impersonal and
personalyet supremeGod.
Both Sanskrit and Old Javanese Saiva sources characterise the Lord in His impersonal
aspect as param@rtha, who was described as omnipervasive and devoid of body, while
the personal God Sad@siva was regarded to have a mantric body made up by the five
faces or limbs Sadyoj@ta, V@madeva, TatpuruXa, Aghora, and `s@na.
Nalalohita (Sanskrit dark blue and red) is the name of Rudra appearing already in
the Vedic Br@hma>a texts, and figuring also in the Pur@>as as one among Sivas
attendants (ga>a) or as the very first form of Siva born from Brahm@; in certain
accounts, he is also depicted as the husband of Sata. What the Dharma P@tanjala is
relating here is one version of the common Pur@>ic myth of the marriage of Siva
and the genesis of the Saiva holy family: see Acri 2011a, pp. 36870).
48
49
31
32
52 For instance, the name of the Daitya is Nalarudraka instead of T@raka; the most
closely related version of the myth of Nalarudraka is narrated in the Old Javanese
Kakavin Smaradahana.
53 This short text of 46 verses, written on a Nepalese codex unicus, has been edited,
translated and discussed by Acharya (2010).
54 The three rites are also prescribed for different kinds of ascetics in certain
Brahmanic sm@rta manuals, which are however VaiX>ava in character (cf.
Acharya 2010, pp. 1346).
55 The Panc@rthabh@Xya ad 1.1 (pp. 34) mentions that the Lord incarnated in a
Brahmans body at K@y@vat@ra and walked to Ujjayina, where he covered himself
with ashes; later Pur@>ic sources specify that the Lord entered the corpse of a
Brahman to be reanimated in a cremation ground at K@roha>a or K@y@varoha>a
([the place] of bodily incarnation): cf. Lorenzen (1991, pp. 18081 and 176, fn.
3943) and Bisschop (2006, pp. 4450). Note that the Lingapur@>as account of
K@y@varoha>a states twice that the Lord entered the body of a dead Brahman
through magical yoga (yogam@yay@, 1.24.127b and 128d); compare Dharma
P@tanjala 276.13, stating that P@tanjala and His four brothers were born from the
Lords yoga.
56 Cf. also Lorenzen (1991, pp. 1767).
57 In the closing part of the pancarXi section (Dharma P@tanjala 278.19280.4), the
transfigured P@tanjala refers to Ananta as carrying him to the plain of non-being,
above the world of Sraka>bhathe form that was carried by P@tanjala himselfafter
which he become the universal teacher. Though this detail is not explicitly mentioned by any of the Sanskrit P@supata sources with respect to Lakulasa, it is in
harmony with Mah@bh@rata 12.337.62, according to which Sraka>bha is the form of
Siva responsible for the promulgation of the P@supata doctrine in our cosmic era:
there He is called the husband of Um@ and son of Brahm@ (the latter detail also
pertains to Nalalohita). According to the Rauravas+trasangraha 3.6cd7, Sraka>bha
was taught by Ananta, who in his turn taught the gods and demons.
58 This is also reflected in P@tanjalas statement about his devotion towards his teacher, rather than the Lord.
59 The idea positing a supremacy of the placenta over the other post-birth substances,
as well as the fundamentally dual nature of patterns of Austronesian mystical
siblingship, was suggested to me by Michele Stephen (personal communication,
February 2013).
60 On the translation of the Sanskrit compounds xa:sa (where x the name of the
elected God) as devotee of x instead of portion of xmainly on the basis of the
occurrences in Sanskrit Siddh@ntatantras and Sanskrit inscriptions from Cambodia
cf. Sanderson (200304, pp. 3545, fn. 16). There are, however, instances of the same
compound in Old Javanese literature, where a:sa is more likely to denote a portion
or worldly counterpart: cf., for example, R@m@ya>a Kakavin 11.017d: naray@>@nsa
sireka viX>u s@kX@t He was a worldly counterpart of N@r@ya>a indeed, ViX>u in
bodily form. Of course, the two translations may be simultaneously valid.
61 Cf. also the Old Javanese texts presented by Hooykaas, such as e.g. K 281, where the
pancarXi come right after the pancabrahma, i.e. the fivefold mantric manifestation
of the Lord Siva as mantric-limbed, manifest-cum-unmanifest Sad@siva (cf. also
Andrea Acri
33
Hooykaas 1974, pp. 99, 116, 1368). Note that the kanda mpat too are connected with
the fivefold mantra: as noted by Ottino (2000, p. 140), they represent the fire aspect,
whereas when they are connected with the mantra na ma si v@ ya, they represent
the aspect of water. Both mantras uttered in sequence form the ten-syllabled
mantra sa ba ta a i na ma si v@ ya (das@kXara), which is central in Balinese Saivism.
62 Thus, it seems to be no coincidence that, as related by Hobart et al. (1996, p. 111), in
the Balinese magedongedongan or pregnancy ritual, in which then kanda mpat play an
important role, Sanghyang Guru, Siwa in his manifestation as divine teacher and
educator, and the deified ancestors are entreated to confer good fortune, health,
protection and blessings for a long life on the mother-to-be and her child.
63 According to Ottino (2000, p. 159), this state of affairs echoes the reversal of roles
and power-relations that may occur between the first born and the last born within
a sibling set in a Balinese family: the first born son has the highest affinity with
higher spiritual and ritual matters, which he should pursue, whereas the last born
(either son or daughter) ensures the continuity of the family and inherits the
parental house with the care of the domestic (ancestors) temple. By virtue of
his/her eventually becoming integrated into an ancestral line made of successive
generations of last-born and their families, who constitute the ancestral group of
the core-houseyard [. . .] the last-born becomes hierarchically superior to his siblings who must defer to him in adulthood. It may be pointed out that the fourfold
pattern of Balinese names within any given set of siblingsWayan, Made, Nyoman,
and Ketutmay be related to the concept of kanda mpat as well.
64 This may occur either before or after death, but in both cases with the accompaniment of the kanda mpat; on the Balinese belief that the four lead the soul to ones
ancestral heaven, cf. Hobart et al. (1996, p. 125).

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The Journal of Hindu Studies Volume Issue 2014 (Doi 10.1093/jhs/hiu020) Acri, A. - PancakuÂ Ika and Kanda Mpat - From A PÂ Â Upata Myth To Balinese Folklore

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The Journal of Hindu Studies Advance Access published June 20, 2014

The Journal of Hindu Studies 2014;133

Pancakusika and Kanda Mpat: From a P@supata

Abstract: In this article, I aim at historicising, through a text-historical method,

The example referred to by Hooykaas to perorate the existence of an element

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Nalanda-Sriwijaya Centre, ISEAS

Pancakusika and Kanda Mpat

Kanda Mpat: between text and reality

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Pancakusika and Kanda Mpat

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Pancakusika and Kanda Mpat

no dimension of Balinese culture has been subjected to greater indifference on

In spite of the questionableand nowhere explained or justifiedview that the

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Pancakusika and Kanda Mpat

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Pancakusakas Lokap@las (Sad@)sivas Directions

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vernix caseosa sinews

Table 1. Kanda mpat and their micro-macrocosmic correlations

Insofar as they constitute a sort of interface between the bhuta/sthula/sakala level

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According to Ottino (2000, pp. 13031),

Pancakusika and Kanda Mpat

Contrarily to Stephen, anthropologist Wiener (1995, p. 214) defined the kanda

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part, introduced to the island from elsewhere, and there(after) transformed,

According to Headley, an ancestral pattern of classificatory siblingship in Western

Pancakusika and Kanda Mpat

Pancakusika: a localised Indic Saiva myth?

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Pancakusika and Kanda Mpat

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manifested on earth is detectable in a Sanskrit P@supata source, Kau>ninyas

Pancakusika and Kanda Mpat

In this passage the Lordspeaking through his avatar P@tanjalaappears to refer

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Pancakusika and Kanda Mpat

Pancakusika and Kanda Mpat: between taxonomy and salvation

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versions of an early P@supata motif that developed independently in different

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Pancakusika and Kanda Mpat

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Pancakusika and Kanda Mpat

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Pancakusika and Kanda Mpat

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Pancakusika and Kanda Mpat

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Pancakusika and Kanda Mpat