Pura Goa Lawah

About

Pura Goa Lawah stands in the coastal village of Pesinggahan in Klungkung Regency, its compound spreading northward from Jalan Raya Goa Lawah toward the Goa Lawah shoreline. The name translates roughly as Bat Cave Temple, and true to that epithet, the innermost sanctum draws its identity from a yawning cavern whose depths are alive with colonies of nectar bats, creatures whose ceaseless rustling forms an unbroken sacred murmur beneath the prayers of worshippers.

The compound is ordered in the classic Balinese threefold arrangement: an outer forecourt (jaba pisan, or nistaning mandala), a middle precinct (jaba tengah, or madya mandala), and the innermost enclosure (jero, or utamaning mandala). Entry to the complex is announced by a candi bentar split gate, with a bale kulkul drum pavilion standing to its west. Several open pavilions occupy the outer courtyard, including the bale gong where the gamelan ensemble is kept ready for ceremonial performance. Three paduraksa portals frame the passage into the inner sanctum, where a trio of meru towers rises, one consecrated to Shiva, and smaller shrines recede into the cave opening. The steps of one bale pavilion are flanked by carvings of Naga Basuki, the primordial serpent-dragon revered in Balinese cosmology as the keeper of cosmic equilibrium.

Early in the twentieth century it was common to embed porcelain ceramic plates into the gates and shrines of Pura Goa Lawah, a decorative tradition shared with other venerable Balinese Temples such as Pura Kehen. Over time this ornamental layer has been gradually reduced, though traces of the practice can still be encountered across the complex.

History

Tradition credits the founding of Pura Goa Lawah to Mpu Kuturan, the eleventh century priest who travelled through Bali establishing and ordering Hindu worship across the island, and holds that the cave itself first drew priests here as a seat of meditation before any Temple stood. In 1849 the compound found itself at the centre of the War of Kusamba, when Dutch colonial forces under Andreas Victor Michiels fought the army of the Klungkung kingdom, led by Dewa Agung Istri Kanya, near its walls.

Significance

The gods and Sanghyang Naga Basuki, the serpent-dragon said to hold the cosmos in balance, are held by Balinese belief to dwell within the cave itself, so that the bats stirring in its dark are not incidental to the pura's sanctity but part of it. As one of the Sad Kahyangan Jagad, the six holiest sanctuaries of Bali, Goa Lawah is understood to be one of the pivot points that keeps the island in spiritual equilibrium, and pilgrims from across Bali still gather here at every piodalan to renew that balance.

Architecture

Balinese Hindu Temple architecture in three courts, with a candi bentar split gate and meru towers built directly against a natural cave mouth