Daily offerings for the deities’ feast. Consist of young coconut leaves, colourful flower, finely sliced pandan leaves, a slice of fruit, a candy or a cake, holy water and lit incense.
Culture and religion is an integral part to construct of Bali people. The religion plays the important part to the culture of Bali people, as seen as many of the culture products in Bali are the result of the religion. The culture is existed because of the religion and the vice versa.
The culture products may be seen bodily in Bali , manifested in architectural buildings, arts, music, dances, and everything else are dedicated to the religion. Not every nuances of the unique Balinese culture we are privileged to observe, but one thing people may notice right off a moment they were landed in this island is the daily offerings in the small laden of young coconut leaves filled with flowers, finely sliced pandan leaves, and a small slice of fruit.
Canangsari can be found everywhere around the island, started from the temples, every intersection people may pass through, every front gates, front doors, main family temple, shrines, rooms, even on the computer’s case.
The small basket made carefully from young coconut leaves to be filled with flowers, finely sliced pandan leaves and other things such a sliced of sugar cane, candy, cake or rice and nuts.
The art of the offering making is the gesture of the Bali people to express their gratitude for God’s blessings.
The Canangsari business
Balinese Hinduism followers render the offerings everyday. With the total of Bali’s population of 3.2 million of people which 93 percent is Balinese Hindu it could make a rough calculation that estimated about 3-4 million of offerings rendered everyday in Bali .
It is quite a business to make the Canangsari business profitable. A modest household, not mention to the business establishments in Bali , needs about 20-50 daily canangsari every day. With the range price Rp 5,000—Rp 10,000 per day. So imagine that how much money needed to be spent for the offerings and how many kilograms of flowers, leaves and other items were needed.
Many of Balinese women, especially at the rural areas still practice the art of the offering making for their own purpose as part of the their household management. Yet their counterpart in the town, especially the working women tried to be more practical with buying the ready made offerings.
The Cryptic of Canangsari
Actually, behind the gesture of the daily offerings for the deities’ feast there’s cryptic message for the Balinese Hindu* as recently a village leader pointed out to the writer that the offerings need certain ingredients which need the keeping for the environment to ensure their gesture will be sustained for their offspring.
The basic rule of the daily offering for the God’s feast—certain flower of colour red, yellow, white or violet, certain leaves, certain fruit, a dab of holy water that should be taken from of certain spring. All of them need to protect the environment for the offspring could continue the gratitude gesture to the God.
The need to protect the environment should be by all the concerned, as the consciousness that the all of the source of the ingredient will not last forever without pruning, cultivating and preserving the environment. The entire source behind the canangsari is correlated and aptly put with the recent issue of the global warming and climate change.
Indeed, the canangsari business is need of a lot-lot of flowers, young coconut leaves, pandan leaves and other items and also holy water, however the canangsari is the manifestation of Bali people’s concern and love towards the nature.
The correlation of the trees, water, land and of course human, should be in balance. The trees need the water; the trees nurtured the water will be preserved. The water conserved the trees will be cultivated, and then the land is nourishing and good for the human. This is traditional wisdom that we should learn.
Through the canangsari, Bali people learn that the ingredients of the canangsari were needed to be protected so that they will be able to continue and pass the gratitude to the God expression down to their offspring. If they neglected to do that, it will be sure that all ingredients will be lost forever to them.
The concept of preserving the environment will ensure the continuation of the art of canangsari making to our descendants. It’s mean that our children will be able to express their gratitude with the offerings.
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*) : Balinese Hinduism, 'Agama Tirtha', is very different from Indian Hinduism. Because in the Balinese Hinduism almost all Balinese ceremonies involved and ended to the cleansing the spirit with the holy water (tirtha)—Gede Prama—“Merenda Agama Tirtha”.
