Local Updates of Bali

Helping the dead find their way into the other world is a serious business. As sarcophagus craftsman, Cokorda Bagus Wirananta explains, if you are packed off in the wrong vehicle there will be no end of confusion on arrival in the heavens. Rather like taking the wrong bus in an unknown land and having to revise travel plans to your destination.

“In the heavens people know their place by the vehicles. All the cows are together, the lions together. So if you have, as your sarcophagus, a green cow with a fish tail in your family, you have to stay with that from generation to generation,” Cok says of the enormous variety of Balinese Hindu sarcophagi.

And if you get it wrong and wind up in a bull when your vehicle to the heavens should have been a lion, there is a price to pay. “If people change their sarcophagus to a different design it creates great danger to the living family,” Cok says. “This is because these laws come from the ancestors. Families need to make a ceremony and apologize when a mistake like that is made. Spirits will then help the dead find their rightful place in the heavens.”

Dangers come to the living in the form of nightmares, of everything going wrong, says Cok. For the deceased to wind up in the tiger zone when he or she is a fish is “a burden for the dead person’s spirit”. “They won’t accept you in heaven and the next [living] generation won’t have a very good life. So it’s very important to get the right vehicle and follow the family history. If not its bad for the spirits and bad for the people left on earth.”

These dangers to the living and the dead are what Cok has spent much of his life attempting to prevent. He is a master sarcophagus maker, skilled in the esoteric knowledge of the symbols and religious laws associated with these fantastic creatures that bear soul and body through the flames on the final voyage to the heavens. Cok explains he never asked for this role — rather, he was called by the gods to take on a role he sees as his social work, work he does not charge for.

“It felt heavy to be chosen (for this work) because it is a big responsibility and risk, because I cannot choose to only make sarcophagus for rich people or good people — I have to give my skill to all who ask. If someone asks I cannot say no.”

There is a risk too, in being a sarcophagus craftsman; people lose their minds, Cok warns. “The gods chose me to make sarcophagi; I feel chosen. If you are not chosen by the gods, then people can go crazy, because this work has a relationship to the soul.” When Cok first heard the call, he “studied from my interior, from my soul. Before I was chosen I washed and performed a ceremony and cleansed my self.”

That purification allows him to commune with the dead and, sometimes, wayward spirits safely. “Before I start to make a sarcophagus I hold a ceremony and purify myself to be ready to meet the soul of the deceased,” he says. “In that way we are safe and we work on this (sarcophagus) together. I need their help because it’s their vehicle to the heavens, alam jauh, the unseen.”

As they were in life so they are in death, says Cok of the souls he works side by side with on these vehicles that traverse two worlds. “I find the character of the deceased will be seen in the form of the sarcophagus. I have seen and felt bodies in the past where people have had quite different characters. This difference comes through in the work. When the character is good the measuring goes well; when it is bad it’s very hard to measure the body or to make the sarcophagus fit. Things break and they won’t fit,” says Cok of the disturbances in energies when dealing with the dead.

“When the character of the deceased is calm and smooth, then so is the work process. If making the sarcophagus is difficult I know the deceased was a difficult person in life. These sarcophagi take longer to make because of all the little problems that keep cropping up.” His made-to-measure body and soul sarcophagi are beautiful. An unfinished great bull stands as tall as a draught horse, his head regal and proud, carved in cotton tree wood. “We call it kutuh wood and it is used specifically for sarcophagi, but it’s now hard to find in Bali”.

Alongside is a black bull, with gold bells and red tassels adorning his head; colored paper and gilding made rich for the voyage to the heavens. But this last journey of the friends he has worked with for nearly a month is hard for Cok. “When they burn them, I cannot watch. When the families collect the sarcophagi to take them away, I feel sad and proud at the same time,” he says. “I am sad because in work like this I make the shape, the sarcophagus, and I am focused, living with this. Because the soul is already involved in the process I don’t feel tired, but sometimes I feel sick if the soul is strange.”

From his home in Peliatan just outside Ubud, Cok crafts these transporters to the other world in the fantastic shapes of bulls, tigers, lions, fish and more, each having its own place in heaven.

“The most common is the black bull, then lions and very rarely a white tiger. These are only for the very holy priests, as the white bull is also only for priests, the black bulls are for the warrior class,” explains Cok.

While Cok makes sarcophagi over many weeks and with deep regard for the traveler, down the road in Denpasar, ready-made sarcophagi in the traditional mix of animal forms are available.

“In Denpasar they have places with ready-to-use sarcophagi,” he says. “They make a local size that is one size fits all. They are practical and quick when needed. That’s different to me — every sarcophagus I make is at the request of a person.”

Turning again to the massive bull in process, he takes up his chisel and goes again to work with a soul on its journey home.

Written by Trisha Sertori
Published on The Jakarta Post - thejakartapost.com