THE RANGDA AND THE BARONG

Queen of the leyaks and undoubtedly the most interesting character on the island is the
blood-thirsty, cbild-eating Rangda the witch-widow mistress of black magic.
A curious ceremony in the temple of a neighbouring village introduced Rangda to us. It was
well after midnight, and although the date for the temple feast was still far off, there was a
crowd, mostly women, in the courtyard sitting in a circle, around a man who appeared to be
in a trance. Next to him sat the old pemangku, the temple priest, quiet and concentratin
attending to the incense that burned in a clay brazier before a monstrous mask with
enormous fangs. The community it. seemed, was having a wave of bad luck and they were
asking Rangda to advise them, through the medium, of what she required to leave them
alone. The stillness of the night, the incense, and the dim light of the petrol lamp, all aided
the feeling that the spirit of the dreaded witch was really there. Soon the oracle began to
twitch and foam at the mouth, making painful efforts to talk. The mask was placed on his
bead and the priest listened with intense interest to the incoherent groans, muffled by the
mask, which he translated in a monotonous voice as the words of Rangda, now in the body
of the medium. After the offerings that she demanded were enumerated, she reproached
the villagers for neglecting to give a performance of Tjalon Arang, the play in which her
triumphs are enacted. To end the ceremony the musicians played and Rangda danced; then
the manwas taken out of the trance and Rangda, presumably, went back to her abode in
the summit of the highest mountain, the Gunung Agung.
Time and again we saw Rangda. appear in various magic plays; she
was invariably represented as a monstrous old woman, her naked white
body striped with black. Rings of black fur circled her long, hanging
breasts, realistically made of bags of white cloth filled with sawdust.
She was entirely covered by her white hair, which reached to her feet,
allowing only the bulging eyes and twisted fangs of her mask to be
seen. Her tongue bung out, a strip of leather two feet long, painted red
and ending in flames of gold. A row of flames came from the top of her
head. She wore white gloves with immense claws and in her right hand
she held the white cloth with which she hid her horrible face to
approach her unsuspecting victims. This cloth became a deadly weapon
if it struck.
The character of Rangda has its origin in historical facts, now
interwoven with fantastic myth. At the beginning of the eleventh century a Balinese prince
became the king of Java, the great Erlangga. His mother, Mahendradatta, was a Javanese
princess who ruled Bali with her Balinese husband, Dharmodayana, until the husband,
suspecting her of practising evil magic, exiled her to the forest. When Erlanggas father died,
leaving Mabendradatta a rangda, a widow, she conspired to use her band of pupils trained
in the black arts to destroy Erlangga's kingdom.
Professor Stutterheim says that her chief grudge against Erlangga was that be had failed to
bring pressure upon his father not to take another wife. Moreover, none of the nobility
would marry Rangda's beautiful daughter, Ratna Menggali, out of fear of the old witch, and
her caste as a Javanese princess required a noble marriage or none at all. Before Rangda
was vanquished by the superior magic of Mpu Bharada, Erlangga's teacher, she bad killed
nearly half of Erlangga's subjects by plagues brought by her leyaks. (According to
Stutterheim, the sanctuary of Bukit Dharma near Kutri, gianyar, is the burial place of the
famous witch. There is kept a weather-beaten but still beautiful statue of the witch,
remembered as the Queen Mahendradatta in the shape of the goddess of death, Durga.)
The following is an extract of the current Balinese version o the story of Rangda (translated
from the Kawi by R. Ng. Poerbatjaraka, in De Calon Arang) :
" The old witch rangda Tjalon Arang bad sworn to destroy the happy and prosperous Daha,
Erlangga's kingdom, because of fancied insults to her beautiful daughter Ratna Menggali -
the noblemen of Daha bad refused her in marriage for fear of her mother's evil reputation.
Tjalon Arang went with her pupils to the cemetery and they prayed and danced in honour of
Begawati, the deity of black magic, to help them destroy Daha. The goddess appeared and
danced with them, granting her permission, warning the witch, however, to preserve the
centre of the kingdom untouched. The witches danced at the crossroads and soon people
fell ill in great numbers.

"On discovering the cause of the epidemic, Erlangga ordered his soldiers to go and kill the
witch. They stole into her house while she slept and stabbed her in the heart', but Tjalon
Arang awoke unhurt and consumed the daring soldiers with her own fire. The witch went
once more into the cemetery and danced with her pupils, dug out corpses, cutting them to
pieces, eating the members, drinking the blood, and wearing their entrails as. necklaces.
Begawati appeared again, and joined in the bloody banquet, but warned Tjalon Arang to be
careful. The witches danced once more at the crossroads and the dreadful epidemic ravaged
the land; the vassals of Erlangga died before they could even bury the corpses they bore to
the cemeteries.
" The desperate king sent for Mpu` Bharada, the holy man from Lemah Tulis, the only
living being who could vanquish the witch. Mpu' Bharada planned his campaign carefully. He
sent Bahula, his young assistant, to ask for the witch's daughter in marriage. Highly
flattered, the mother gave her consent and after a happy and passionate honeymoon
Bahula learned from his wife the secret of Tjalon Arang's power, the possession of a little
magic, book, which he stole and turned over to his master. The holy man copied it and had
it returned before the disappearance could be noticed. The book was a manual of
righteousness and had to be read backwards. The holy man was then able to. restore life to
those victims whose bodies bad not yet decayed. Armed with the new knowledge, be
accused the witch of her crimes, but she challenged him by setting. an enormous banyan
tree on fire by a single look of her fiery eyes. Bharada foiled the enraged witch by restoring
' the tree, and she turned her fire against the holy man. Unmoved, he killed her with one of
her own mantras;' but she died in her monstrous rangda form and, Bharada, to absolve her
of her, crimes and enable her to atone for them, revived her, gave her human appearance,
and then killed her again.
It is only in the legend that Rangda could be vanquished; the Balinese perform the story of
her struggle with Erlangga in a play, but always stop before the point where the tide turned
against the witch.
Bali Institute dbase archive
Many sources