Taru - Background
In the usadas which are found on the island of Bali countless prescriptions are mentioned for the treatment of all kinds of illness. In their compositions plants naturally take a prominent role. However, were one to expect that, out of their frequent mention, conclusions can be drawn about the specific uses of certain plants, one would soon realize that a whole number of them are in fact used simultaneously to treat entirely different symptoms. It is not even uncommon to find that plants with opposite effects are mixed together in the same prescriptions.
Such contradictions could lead one to reject the entire Balinese collection of prescriptions as meaningless or not worth considering; a conclusion which one indeed finds in the European literature. However, in reading the Usadas, one must not forget that prescriptions contained therein are not homogeneous but that they reflect the opinions of particular balians (dukuns) and the different teachings about the meaning of medicines which they represent. Namely, while there are healers who attribute an effect to each of the individual constituents of their recipes, others see them merely as vehicles for the conveyance of magical forces. It is not necessarily the case that the consistent use of the same plants, or of plants from a limited selection, for this latter purpose is an unnecessary step. One can imagine that for the transportation of particular forces, corresponding carrying mediums are also required. One should consider in this context the doctrine of transmigration and signature.
Since these healing mediums or medicinal plants are listed in the usadas irrespective of the viewpoints of the different balians from whom they originate, a colourful jumble is created. Proper medicines are found next to magical ones or next to magical incantations and other mystical things. In order to extract out of the recipes of the usadas the healing effects that are attributed to particular plants in Balinese opinion, one would first have to order them according to the above criteria. What I have been trying to illustrate is that one cannot simply regard these recipes in their totality as a Balinese Pharmacopoeia. This has been a common mistake.
There is, apart from the usadas, another lontar text which well deserves the label of "Pharmacopoeia" since it lists medicinal plants together with a description of their characteristics, properties and applications. This text is meant for the use of such balians who assume that there are specific healing powers in a number of plants. The text names these properties and mentions at the same time, as an example of their application, a disease or a group of symptoms against which the plant material can be applied in a particular way. This text is named "Taru Pramana" or "Pramana ning Taru", that is, `the life force of plants'. This lontar is considerably more difficult to obtain than other lontars in Bali since it does not enjoy as wide a distribution as the usadas and is only in few hands. Insofar as we understand the handling of medical lontars among Balinese, such a precious possession is much more jealously guarded and is not readily accessible to the general public.
One edition of the entire treatise, after a brief introduction, lets the medicinal plants appear as speaking entities in front of a learned ascetic and the gods in order to speak themselves about their effects. In the other editions (5) two parts can be distinguished: general theoretical reflections and a list of individual plants with their respective descriptions. the general part develops as a support a philosophical system which can be traced back to the Indian Veda, and which has had an effect on the current opinions of different groups of healers in Bali. One of these text expresses itself as follows (6): "Out of the rays of the sun emerge those plants which form branches, from the rays of the moon emerge those which form creepers (7), from the rays of the stars, those which have no branches." And further, "what comes out the sun, moon and stars, becomes one in the windu (6a), turns into cloud and brings forth the rain which brings life to all living creatures. And Sang Hyang Surya (the sun), Sang Hyang Wulan (the moon), Sang Hyang Lintang (the stars) together enter into each plant". So each pant unifies within itself all of the three elements of the trinity (sun-moon-star), even if it is associated in another sense with only one of them as described above. The further elaborations in the text show that the three qualities of plants which result from this classification are 'heat', 'coldness' and `lukewarmness'. (8) These qualities have their seat in the different parts of the plant. In the Taru Pramana these parts are: the juice (sap), roots, trunk (stalk), bark, wood (flesh), leaves, flowers and fruit.
The criteria for determining the effect of a plant are its colours, consistency, smell and flavour. The most systematic classification on the basis of colour and consistency is given for the `juice' [Germ. `Saft'] (9) of plants. In this system the colour of the juice is said to depend on the influence of the sun, moon and stars which is explained as follows: "In all plants which have red juice, Sang Hyang Surya enters into the roots, Sang Hyang Wulan into the stem and Sang Hyang Lintang into the leaves. In all plants which have yellow juice, Sang Hyang Wulan enters into the roots, Sang Hyang Lintang into the trunk, Sang Hyang Surya into the leaves. In all plants which have white juice Sang Hyang Lintang into the roots, Sang Hyang Surya into the trunk, Sang Hyang Wulan into the leaves. (10) In this context nothing further is mentioned about the efficacy of plants in relation to the colour of their juice [or sap]. This information is supplied in the continuation of the text where a whole number of colours and shades, other than the above mentioned colours red, yellow and white, are enumerated together with their associated functions. No reason is given to explain why different colours have a particular meaning for the evaluation of the juice. However, an explanation can be discovered easily in the mystical associations which exist between these colours, cardinal direction, gods, and the already mentioned sacred root syllable `Om' (`Ong') (see Note 6). Numerous Balinese texts refer to these relations. According to the texts, the `Windu' (see Note 6), symbol of the mental concentration of the god Siwa during the creation of the world, radiates forth images through his yoga which become gods. Out of such emanations are created, one after the other, the gods Brahma, Wisnu, Iswara, and further Mahadewa, Rudera, Sangkara, Sambu and Mahisora, that is, eight in all. These position themselves at the four main cardinal points, south, north, east, west, and the four intermediate cardinal points, north-east, south-east, north-west, south-west, grouped around Siwa who thrones in the centre. To the above cardinal points and their gods correspond the colours red, black, white, yellow, and blue, pink, green, orange, which united or mixed together form the multicoloured or crystal clear centre (Siwa).
The same eight colour varieties (or nine together with the center) are also perceived in plant juices by the Balinese. However, the effects which are attributed to them, in correspondence to this scheme, are limited to three qualities, which is only logical considering their origin (see note 6). These effects are `hot', `cold' and `lukewarm'(11): the plant juice [sap] is hot if it has a `southerly' colour, that is, red, pink or orange, it is cold if it has a `northerly' colour, that is, black, blue or green, it is lukewarm if it is a mixture of a warm (southerly) and a cold (northerly) colour.
The `easterly' white and the `westerly' yellow are also, like their mixture, regarded as hot(12); mixed with red they are always hot, with other colours they are lukewarm. (13)
The colour of the center is clear like water, crystal clear is cold, when it shines very cold.
So much about the colours of the juice [sap]. About consistency it is said that: sticky thick sap is always hot; thin, stringy (slimy) sap is cold. Apart from this it is also said that the bark of all plants which have sticky sap is hot.
The discussion of the other parts of a plant, such as the flowers, fruit, root, bark, wood or flesh, takes two forms. On the one hand, in the list of medicinal plants, they are labelled as hot, cold or lukewarm without further explanations. On other occasions they are used for the classifications of the particular plants. This takes place in a special chapter of the lontar text "Usada Ratu Ajhana" which has the title "Taru Pramana". Therein is mentioned that, in order to judge the character of the medicinal plant, one must pay attention to the flowers or, or in their absence to the fruits, furthermore to the odour and flavour of the wood (flesh). If the flowers of the plant are white, yellow or green it is hot; if they are red or blue it is cold, and if they are multicoloured it is lukewarm. Sweet or sour tasting wood or flesh identifies the plant as hot, bitter or pungent flavour as cold.(14)
In this edition of the Taru Pramana a fundamentally different viewpoint is adopted insofar as a plant as a whole is considered to be either cold, hot or lukewarm on the basis of a single characteristic. The view that there are three different qualities in the particular parts of the same plant is based on purely philosophical speculations. However the present teaching takes a more magical perspective. That these two viewpoints coexist and are fused together in Bali is well known.
However, since any teaching according to the Balinese should be understood cum grano salis, the Taru Pramana also contains a lot of complicating criteria, which may have been added later. These must be considered and can provide a good means of escape from embarrassment if it turns out that hypothesis and reality are irreconcilable. Such criteria are for example the season and the time of the day (15) during which the medicine is collected. (That a favourable day in the calender is to be chosen is taken for granted). So it is said that in the sixth (Balinese) month the life force of plants is distributed as follows: in the tip is heat, below (in the root) is coldness, in the middle (trunk, stalk) is lukewarmness. It is also emphasized on this occasion that in the bast, below the bark of tree, is coldness while further within, in the soft wood (splint), is heat. Concerning the leaves it is said that old leaves are hot, semi-mature leaves are lukewarm, and the young sprouting leaf tips are cold.
Concerning the hour of the day one must consider that a large tree, the well know waringin (Ficus benjamina) is apparently chosen as an example, is cold during the time after sun rise during the first hour, approximately between 6.00 and 7.30 am. In the third hour between 9.00 and 10.30 am. the tree is cold in the south and hot in the north. In the fourth hour between 10.30 and noon it is completely hot. Then, after 12 p.m. it becomes cold in the east (16) until in the evening it is cold in all parts. According to the same source all parts of a plant are cold in the morning, in the first hour, and lukewarm in the second hour, hot at noon and cold in the evening or at night. It must be mentioned that this dependence of the temperature conditions on the daily temperature variations due to the position of the sun, has little to do with the mystical hypothesis about the colour of the juice, for example. Apart from that it must be considered that the warming of a large tree on the north side due to the position of the sun takes place during the larger part of the year, due to the somewhat southerly position of the island of Bali, but not during the fourth months that the sun moves to the south in Bali, during which the tree would therefore have to be hot in the south and cold in the north.
Whichever version of the Taru Pramana is looked at it is made clear in each of them that it is essential for the balian to know whether plants substance should be addressed as hot, cold or lukewarm. This knowledge is important for him because all diseases, in his opinion, can be divided into the same categories. The fundamental principle is that "cold diseases" are treated with hot plants or parts of plants, hot diseases with cold plants, and lukewarm diseases with lukewarm plants or a mixture of hot and cold ones (see Note 11).
Although this is not really part of the topic I would like to mention finally that the "Taru Pramana" emphasizes that there are no diseases of plants. What is meant are internal diseases. Destruction or damage of plant growth, crop failure due to insects or other parasites or through the curse of the gods, are of course known to the Balinese. Internal diseases cannot occur in plants because, even though they have an atma (soul)(17), their atma is not accompanied by Kala and Dewa as is the atma of human beings. Dewa and Kala, good and evil, not only regulate the character and behaviour of a human being but he becomes under there rule either a "leyak" (18) and sick, or a "dukun" (see Note 3) and "medicine" (i.e. he remains healthy and impervious to diseases).(19)
The effects and characteristics of particular medicinal plants, as I have already mentioned elsewhere (see Note 3), are explained in the following ways: Firstly the plants appear before Siwa and the other gods to inform them "because the Gods did not possess the ability to heal sick people, in which they were no match for the Taru Pramana and for which reason Siwa asked the plants to instruct him." Secondly, they step in front of the ascetic Sang Prabhu Empu Kuturan who was given the power to call the plants and ask them about their uses as medicines by the goddess Durga, on Siwa instruction, after he had performed forty-two days of ascetic practice on a burial ground. The same was achieved by another ascetic, younger brother of the above, Sang Prabhu Pungung Tiwas, who was given this boon by the god Ludera, who wrote it on his tongue. After the plants had been questioned their words were recorded by the nephew of Kuturan Sang Prabhu Narajasa, who was also well versed in the teachings and ascetics. The enumeration of plants below is nothing other than the protocol which was taken by Narajasa of their conversation with Kuturan. The monotonous repetition of the same words at the appearance of each new plant is only interrupted by the "Kepu" tree (Bombase Malabaricum) who responded to Kuturan's question: "now, Kepu, what are you useful for?" with the counter-question: why, oh lord, do you ask at this time for all plants to appear in front of you? That I ask you.". He receives the response from the ascetic that he was given the power by the goddess Durga to summon all plants and ask them about their medicinal usage. In response to these words the Kepu tree bowed and spoke: "Yes, master, I myself cannot be used in any way as a medicine but I have a relative called Kepuh (Sterculia Foetida) who may be considered a medicine." The latter then appears and the questioning continues.
Those expression which are constantly repeated I have omitted and only listed the Balinese names along with their botanical purpose. (20) In the same order as they are listed in the Taru Pramana. I would like to emphasise that this list does not contain all of the medicinal plants used by the Balinese.
Some comments about Balinese expressions frequently occurring in the list and their translations should be made before they are listed. Where I use the term "character" [Wesen] in reference to a plant, it corresponds to words "daging" (high Balinese), "isi" (low Balinese) and "hawa" (Kawi). These terms are used in the text along side each other and do not indicate, in this case, anything substantial but an inner character (Mal. Arab "dzat"). Learned Balinese explained to me that the meaning is also equivalent to "pramana" or "kekwatan".
The Balinese terms for hot, cold, and lukewarm in reference to plants are other than those in reference to diseases. Heat in relation to the disease is "panas" or "kebus" while in relation to plants one speaks of "hanget", which actually means warming. Coldness of the body is "nyem" (henyem) which means cold or fresh. Coldness in plants is called "tis" (hetis) meaning moist cold, cooling. Lukewarmness of the body is "sebaha", actually the body's natural temperature, lukewarmness in a plant is "dumalada". These terms correspond, it seems, to European instructions which also use the terms `cooling' and `warming'.
The terms "uwap", "urap", and "boreh" (hodak) indicate a mixture, a kind of paste, ointment or grease, prepared from ground solid substances with addition of juicy, liquid or oily ingredients and used for smearing or rubbing onto the body or particular parts of the body. "Uwap" is applied to the stomach, "urap" to the throat and head, and "boreh" to the entire body and limbs.
Some substances are taken regularly as a "medicine", even where there are no symptoms of disease. They are considered to be strengthening and prophylactic. For the same reason some "boreh" are also used daily.
