Between Adat and Agama: The Future of the Religious Role of the Balinese Shadow Puppeteer, Dalang

Abstract

The fact that a Baliense dalang is a priest as well as the performer of wayang shadow puppet theater has already been pointed out in many studies. But the dalang’s role that is emphasized in Bali today is purely that of performer. While dalang’s religious role may not have been forgotten, the places where this role is carried out have definitely become fewer and fewer.

What is important when considering the background of the changes in the dalang’s religious role is the series of reforms that has taken place under the leadership of the Council of Hinduism in Indonesia, in the course of its campaign to have Hinduism recognized as a state religion.

In this movement which began in the latter half of the 1950s, what I want to give particular attention to here is the process whereby most Balinese rituals and beliefs have, as adat (custom), been eliminated from Hindu doctrine, scripture, and religious education as agama (religion). And with this, the religious functions of the dalang have been categorized as adat and likewise eliminated.

This study focusing on the religious role of the dalang will clarify how he was stripped of that role and changed with Bali’s religious and cultural policies and elucidate further the unstable state of the dalang’s religious role, a role which, with the blurring of policy that followed the split in the Council of Hinduism in Indonesia Province in Bali Province of 2001, is oscillating between adat and agama.