Religion in Bali by C. Hooykaas

When a lady of high caste gave birth to twins of different sex, this was considered as being
meritorious and an advantage for her village, for the babies on this elevated level of society were
destined to be a couple (cf. the pharaohs of Egypt). When, however, a commoner gives birth to
twins of different sex, this act of presumption and the babies' supposed incest in the womb were
considered to defile the house (which had to be burned down) and the village (which had to be
left by the unfortunate family, for the next 42 days to be transferred to a shed on the graveyard)
[7].
This idea of a whole community being defiled by impurity is common. A temple will be closed
for some time because its pemangku has found that something untoward has befallen it. Even a
whole province can decide that it feels soiled and unclean, that it needs to be freed from its
impurity. Then the gods of the most representative temple are taken to the sea to be purified
ritually. This is not a matter of some temple priests only, but of hundreds if not even thousands
of followers as well. They and the keepers of stalls along the road who quench their thirst and
still their hunger, and those who help them to find some rest during the night, at reduced prices
or even for the sake of the ceremony, pleasing to the gods—they all are acting in the firm belief
that they are helping to remove impurity. Here it is water which works purification; of old, when
a country had to be purified, a fire offering called homa was brought (last time in Lombok,
1933). One recognizes the two elements of purification, also at the occasion of a cremation:
water and fire.
A provincial ceremony as sketched above, pancha bali krama, 'fivefold offering ritual', can be
held every five years, but only once in a century (or once in a life's time) on behalf of the whole
island an enormous purificatory ritual is held in the state sanctuary of Besakih, on the slope of
the highest mountain, the Gunung Agung. This huge ceremony, in which the governor of the
island is the subject of the padudusan, is called Eka dasa Rudra. Rudra is the most terrific aspect
of the uppergod Siwa; eka dasa means eleven, that is the four directions, the four between them,
nadir, zenith and centre. Such a cosmic event has to be prepared and helped in advance, so that
during the months of preparation as many as possible human remains, buried provisionally in the
vague hope that some time the necessary and considerable means for a decent cremation will be
found, now are given a cremation.