Palintangan

Modern Reproduction

Bali, Indonesia

Notes:

From the Catalogue for "From Mauritania to Japan" by Chana Algarvo: 

" Balinese culture has a unique way of distinguishing the days, weeks, and months of the year through various cycles, reckoning time by means of using different calendar systems that consist of foreign and indigenous traditions. The palelintangan (alternatively, palintangan or pelintangan), belonging to the wariga genre of Balinese literature, has its origins in Balinese Hinduism and is an astrological stellar calendar used for divination, namely, to determine the likely character of a person born on a particular day. Images and scenes, drawn in the Kamasan style, are placed in a grid that follows the 35 days of the combined five-day and seven-day week cycles. The columns reflect the days of the seven-day week, with the first and last row containing iconographic content specific to each day and often varying from calendar to calendar, and the five rows in the middle each representing the days of the five-day week. This palelintangan contains sacred images of a god and wayang (“shadow puppet”) figure in each square compartment on the top row and an animal or demonic figure in each compartment in the bottom row, in addition to having captions and constellation names written in the Balinese language and script. It appears that this manuscript is incomplete as it is missing a row, only containing six leaves in total. The missing leaf could be lost, or it might possibly indicate that the calendar was intentionally made for tourists as some Balinese artists simplified their works to make them more appealing to foreigners. 

The calendar is an example of a prasi, a specific type of palm-leaf manuscript (known as lontar in Indonesia) with illustrations that overall resemble comics. An interesting feature of prasi, and found with most lontar manuscripts more generally, is that they have holes punched in both the center and ends of the leaves, rather than either one or the other as seen with most Indian palm-leaf manuscripts. When the leaves are strung together in this manner, the manuscript can be hung to display its contents in its entirety, and in this case, showing the calendar in full view. Another common material feature of lontar is that the central binding string is secured by a knot around a pis bolong (cash coin) placed above the upper bamboo cover and below the lower bamboo cover. Imitating Chinese imperial coinage with square holes in the center encircled by Chinese writing, the pis bolong are found used in Balinese Hindu ceremonies and serve an amuletic, and sometimes divine, purpose. On a practical level, the coins prevented the binding string from slipping through the leaves when the manuscript was opened, the square hole made fastening more secure, and their weight helped to tightly hold the manuscript together when closed. "