CREMATION OF CHIEF

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21799, 14 May 1934, Page 12

CREMATION OF CHIEF

quaint native rites BURNING INSIDE EFFIGY OCCASION FOR REJOICING The unspoiled beauty of the island of Bali, in the Dutch East Indies, and the picturesque customs oi the islanders, were the most vivid impressions gained by Mr. Cranleigh 11. Barton, a Christehurch artist, on a recent tour of the Indies and Siam. Mr. Barton amused members of the Christchurch branch of the Wellington College Old Boys' Association at the last meeting by telling them of a Balinese funeral, on which the natives were supposed to have spent as much as £I2OO, and which they made the occasion for high festivity. A chief and a younger member of his family were to he cremated, and tho ceremony was preceded by weeks of elaborate preparation. On the actual day of the cremation the festivities began with a long procession of native men and girls, marching to the music of gongs and bells, and escorting an enormous tower, decorated with tinsel and cotton wool and bearing the bodies of the two men. In front of this 50ft. tower was carried a platform, bedecked with a canopy, under which sat in state tho priests and tho dead chief's family. Mr. Barton, who wanted to secure good photographs of tho procession, stood rather close. Ho said that the white suit ho was wearing was completely ruined by jets of chewed betel nut from the mouths of tho natives, who spat continuously in an endeavour to keep away evil spirits. But tho suit, added j\Jr. Barton, was ruined in a good cause, for tho photographs were well worth the trouble. Feasting and Dancing

Later, the bodies in the tower were transferred to effigies of cows —fearsome animals, with golden horns and golden teeth. Other tribes cremated their dead inside other beasts, such as the pig, or inside birds, but this particular chief was an important man, and nothing less than a cow was considered adequate. Tho effigies were burned, after sovai more hours of feasting and dancing, and the ashes of the bodies were collected and strewn on the sea. Tho Balinese, Mr. Barton explained, regarded a funeral as an occasion for rejoicing. Grief came with death, but the funeral generally took place so long after death that grief was forgotten in merriment.

Mr. Barton found the people of Bali both good-looking and good-living. The island abounded so with tho good things of life that it was only necessary for the men to work about three months in the year. were ablo to devote most of their time to art and handicraft, at which they were adept. Their many temples wore filled with examples of the most beautiful carving. They wore always building new temples, and thus their craft did not die with the years. There seemed to be a little temple in almost every ricefield—religion played a great part in the life of the natives. Queen's Birthday Pete While Mr. Barton was on tho island the Dutch officials and the natives celebrated the birthday of the Queen of Holland. Processions of native chiefs and native girls were most interesting and picturesque. Tho men carried jewelled daggers in their girdles and wore elaborately embroidered and highly coloured skirts and coats, and the girls, naked to the waist, danced gracefully to the music of percussion instruments. At a fete in tho capital village Mr. Barton saw hundreds of gambling games in progress. These opportunities were relished by the Dutch officials, and the games were patronised freely by European and Balinese alike. Mr. Barton travelled through Java and visited Siam, and lie found much to interest him in the ruins of Angkor, in the heart of Cambodia. Ho spent some time sketching here,' miles from any European and sunk in the silence of tho jungle. This silence, which some men found disturbing in the extreme, gavo him a soothing sense of living in the past, rather than in the twentieth century.'