KALA 04: Kakawin, Classical Poetry as a Living Tradition in Bali

KALA 04: Kakawin, Classical Poetry as a Living Tradition in Bali

By Marlowe Bandem & Andika Devara Loeis

What allows a poetic tradition to live for more than a thousand years? The fourth edition of SAKA Museum’s KALA (Knowledge, Artistry, Legacy & Awareness) conversation series offered a clear answer. A poem lives not through words alone, but through the people who continue to sing, translate, interpret, paint, teach, and reshape it.

Held at SAKA Museum on 30 July 2026, KALA 04 explored kakawin—classical poetry composed in Old Javanese—and its continuing life in Bali. It brought together Dr Keiko Kamiishi of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Dr Putu Ari Suprapta Pratama of Udayana University. More than 30 participants attended, including people who study, practise, and preserve kakawin, alongside others encountering it for the first time.

Kakawin is a genre of classical poetry composed in Old Javanese, commonly called Kawi in Bali. Its verses follow meters built from patterns of heavy syllables, known as guru, and light syllables, known as laghu. Meter is a poem’s rhythmic framework. Much like a musical pattern, it determines how many syllables belong in a line and where each type falls, guiding its recitation or singing. Reading kakawin directly from a traditional Balinese manuscript also requires knowledge of aksara Bali, or Balinese script.

Famous kakawin include the Kakawin Rāmāyaṇa, Arjunawiwāha, Bhāratayuddha, and Sutasoma. Among them, the Arjunawiwāha ("The Marriage of Arjuna"), composed by Mpu Kanwa in the eleventh century, tells how the hero Arjuna withdraws to Mount Indrakila to meditate in pursuit of divine power. The god Indra sends celestial nymphs to break his concentration, but Arjuna holds firm, goes on to defeat the demon king Niwatakawaca, and is rewarded for his devotion. This story returns later in Dr Kamiishi's presentation.

Translation Across Voice and Image

Translation and interpretation formed the central thread of Dr Kamiishi’s presentation, “The Pulse of Kakawin: Voice, Image, and Translation in Balinese Culture.” Rather than treating Kawi as an isolated language, she asked what happens when its poetry moves into another language, voice, image, or generation. Drawing primarily on the Kakawin Arjunawiwāha, she traced this movement through performance, visual art, and manuscripts.

In wayang, traditional puppet theatre, the parekan or panasar are attendant characters who mediate between the drama and its audience. They translate difficult Kawi passages, explain the action, and connect it with present-day life. A similar exchange occurs in pepaosan or mabebasan, communal practices of reciting and interpreting classical texts. The pengwacen, or reciter, sings the original verse. The peneges, or interpreter, then translates it into Balinese and explains its meaning. Interpreters may adapt vocabulary, examples, and levels of formality to convey relationships and emotions that a literal translation might miss. This process keeps kakawin understandable and relevant, even though Kawi is no longer spoken in everyday life.

She continued by showing how visual art offers another form of translation, carrying words into images. As an example, she presented a palm-leaf folio from a prasi manuscript depicting a scene from the Arjunawiwāha. Prasi is a Balinese art form in which texts and illustrations are incised onto prepared palm leaves. Dark pigment is then rubbed into the grooves to make the lines visible. The illustration depicts a celestial nymph calling upon the moon.

Dr Kamiishi presented the passage in Indonesian and English as follows.

“Datanglah, bulan yang suci. Biarkan aku memanggil pesona dan manismu untuk membantu.”
“Come, sacred moon. Let me call upon your charm and sweetness to help me.”

Dr Kamiishi drew attention to the way the nymph calls upon the cosmos for assistance. Sent by Indra to tempt Arjuna and disturb his meditation, the nymph enlists the beauty and allure of nature in the attempt. The scene reveals the scale of Arjuna’s test. He must resist not only the celestial nymph but also the forces of nature she invokes, while keeping his concentration unbroken.

Rather than illustrating every line literally, the artist brings the moon, the nymph’s gesture, and her appeal together in a single scene. These choices transform the poem’s longing, beauty, and tension into a visual experience. Like a spoken interpretation, the image does more than reproduce the poem. It offers a new reading of it.

For Dr Kamiishi, such transformations can awaken kalangwan, an Old Javanese concept describing a state of absorption in beauty. In that moment, poetry is not only understood through its words but also felt through rhythm, voice, image, and emotion. It moves beyond the mind and enters the heart. In her concluding remarks, she explained that translation is not an addition to kakawin, but part of how the tradition continues.

Practising and Passing On Kakawin

At one point, Dr Ari Suprapta demonstrated mabebasan himself, singing a verse aloud in the Rāgakusuma meter (pictured above). Hearing the meter come to life in his own voice — the long guru and short laghu syllables shaping each line — gave the session a rare, almost magical immediacy.

He explained that kakawin grew from the Sanskrit tradition of kāvya, a highly crafted form of poetry known for its meter, imagery, and artistic expression. Poets in Nusantara made the tradition their own by writing in Old Javanese, adapting Indian meters, developing local ones, describing local landscapes, and connecting poetry with singing, ritual, and spiritual practice.

Dr Ari Suprapta then shifted the discussion from interpreting inherited works to creating new ones. Meter, he argued, remains the backbone of kakawin, while its subjects and vocabulary can respond to the present. He highlighted a growing group of contemporary kawi, or poets, in Bali whose works expand the moral world of kakawin. Their poems move beyond familiar struggles between good and evil to explore responsibility, public service, cultural continuity, wellbeing, and the choices communities face in everyday life.

I Made Kuna’s Kakawin LPD Bualu, for example, tells the modern story of a village credit institution. It introduces words and ideas such as “governor” and “percent,” which would have been unknown to earlier Old Javanese poets. Although its subject and vocabulary are new, its meter keeps the work firmly within the kakawin tradition.

The physician I Nyoman Adiputra composed Kakawin Bali Saba Langö about the Bali Arts Festival, showing that kakawin writing is not limited to literary scholars. The younger writer I Made Arik Wiraputra continues the tradition through works including Kakawin Usadhi Něgari. Written during the COVID-19 pandemic, the poem expresses his hope that the virus, after disrupting daily life for nearly two years, would soon disappear.

Dr Ari Suprapta also situated kakawin within Pancagita, the five sacred sounds heard during Balinese yadnya, or offering ceremonies. These include the call of the wooden kulkul, the sound of gamelan, dharmagita or sacred singing, the ringing of the priest’s genta, and the chanting of mantras.

He also emphasised kakawin’s place within dharmagita. When its verses are sung during ceremonies, meter, melody, and voice bring poetry, devotion, and community together. Kakawin is therefore more than a literary form inherited from the past. It remains a creative and sacred practice through which Balinese communities engage with tradition and respond to the world around them.

Carrying Kakawin Forward

Contributions from the audience widened the discussion. Writer and art critic Jean Couteau emphasised the value of cultural gatherings like KALA outside formal institutions, where specialists and the public can meet across disciplines. His observation points to what becomes possible when literature and visual art are discussed together. The relationship between kakawin and prasi offers a clear example. Poetry composed centuries ago takes visual form through images incised on palm leaves, while contemporary audiences find new ways of reading both the text and its imagery. This movement across artistic forms helps explain kakawin’s continuing life and makes its meanings accessible to audiences from different backgrounds.

Nengah Medra, a senior teacher and specialist in Balinese script and literature, offered a related perspective. He reflected with pride on how hopes first expressed in the 1970s were now being carried forward by a younger generation. In Bali, he explained, sacred teachings do not remain in books. Mantra finds expression in kidung, or song; priests’ mudra, or sacred hand gestures, become dance; and the sound of the genta, or ceremonial bell, becomes gamelan. Through these transformations, literature becomes a tradition lived by the community. Medra described this process as sastra dresta, a tradition in which literature provides guidance for life.

Together, these contributions reinforced KALA 04’s broader message that preservation is not simply about keeping texts intact. Kakawin survives because each generation carries it into new voices, images, rituals, and forms of expression while respecting its poetic and sacred foundations. For SAKA Museum, creating space for such encounters is part of exploring the ideas, creative practices, and cultural legacies that shape our understanding of Bali.

More than a millennium after its emergence, kakawin remains alive whenever it is sung, interpreted, visualised, translated, and written anew.