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Nyepi Day : Bali’s Day Of Silence
2004-03-11
[Balibagus.com]
 Every religion in the world seems to have its own calendar systems and hence celebrate its own new year in different ways. Take for example: Chinese's Imlek, Islam's Muharram and Hijriah and for the rest of us that use the Gregorian calendar system will celebrate the ordinary New Year on 1st January. However, it is a quite different with Balinese Hindu who use two calendar systems: pawukon and saka. Pawukon is a 210-day cycle that divided into ten separate weeks system. On the other hand, saka, a lunar calendar system that originally from South India was introduced to Indonesia around 465 AD. The saka year has 12 month. Each month ends on a new moon. The saka year is also unique; it is 78 years behind the Gregorian calendar system. For instance the year 2004 in Gregorian calendar system is year 1926 in saka calendar.
Nyepi or sipeng, which falls on 21 March this year, is a day to celebrate the new saka year. The main purpose of nyepi is to clean the bhuana agung (universe) and bhuana alit (human). This is a great day for Balinese Hindu to do self-introspection to reach jagaditha and moksa (physically and mentally happiness).
| There are several ritual ceremonies that need to be done to celebrate nyepi:
1. Melasti or melis or mekiis
On this day, people go to the pura (temple), take the pratimas (God's effigy)
and go to the beaches or rivers and symbolically cleaning them. This ceremony
symbolizes that human should clean up themselves before facing the nyepi day.
Melasti usually conducted three or four days before nyepi.
|  2. Tawur Kesanga
Tawur Kesanga or mecaru, which falls on 20 March, is a ritual ceremony to create a balance between bhuana agung and buana alit. In the afternoon, an event called pengerupukan, is conducted to exclude the evil spirits. There will be ogoh-ogoh (monster that made from bamboo and other materials symbolizes bestiary of the evil spirits) parade across the village. Each banjar (part of village) usually creating its own unique ogoh-ogoh, some take the form of giants and the other take animals as inspiration. When the parade is over the ogoh-ogoh must be burnt. This symbolizes that the evil spirits have been excluded.
At home, people hit kulkul (a traditional tool for communication and also a musical instrument, usually made from bamboo) and bring torch to exclude the evil spirits, starting from kitchen to surrounding house. 3. Nyepi or sipeng
Nyepi means silence. On nyepi, people doing the catur berata penyepian: amati geni (no fire), amati karya (no work), amati lelungan (no traffic or travelling) and amati lelanguan (no eat). There will be absolutely no cars on the road except for the ambulance. Pecalang, a traditional guard that is part of banjar pekraman, will maintain the security and ensuring that there is no noise during this day. This is a perfect time for Balinese Hindu to rethinking what they have done and further seeking for enlightenment.
| 4. Ngembak Geni
The next day after nyepi is ngembak geni. Ngembak geni, which falls on 22 March, is the day when people doing the dharma santhi. People visit their family and relatives, try to forgive any mistakes they made each other. Some people prefer doing dharma gita (song) and other religious activities. Nyepi is a great event that must be seen while you are in Bali.
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