Pura Luhur Uluwatu

About

Pura Luhur Uluwatu rises on a high cliff at the south-western tip of the Bukit Peninsula in Bali, looking out across the open Indian Ocean. Founded in the long tradition of Balinese Hindu shrines that guard the perimeter of the island, the Temple sits where land meets sea and where the spiritual geography of Bali finds one of its most dramatic settings.

The Temple holds a particular place among the sacred sites of Bali as the only sea Temple, the pura segara, that is also counted among the nine kayangan jagat, the directional Temples that orient and protect the island. From its position above the surf the precinct is held to safeguard Bali from the south-western quarter, the direction of the sea and of the unseen powers that move with the tides.

Generations of Balinese Hindus have made pilgrimage here for ceremonies and for evening worship in the cool air above the waves. The cliffside complex of meru shrines, gateways, and stone walls continues to gather the devotion of the community at festival times and serves as a daily place of offering and prayer.

History

The earliest fragments on this cliff are thought to reach back to the tenth century, and Balinese tradition credits the Temple's formal founding to Mpu Kuturan in the eleventh, the same priest credited with much of Bali's early Temple order. At the turn of the sixteenth century the East Javanese sage Dang Hyang Nirartha arrived on a dharmayatra spreading Shaivite worship across Bali, and is said to have built the padmasana shrines that still stand here and to have attained moksha, liberation from the body, at this very point, an event Balinese tradition calls ngeluhur, to go up.

Significance

Pura Luhur Uluwatu is the only sea Temple, pura segara, among the nine kayangan jagat that Balinese cosmology sets to guard the island's directions, watching here over the southwest, the quarter of the sea and its unseen powers. Grey long-tailed macaques share the cliffside with the shrines, and at dusk the Temple's outer wall becomes the stage for kecak, the fire and chant dance performed against the sunset that has carried Uluwatu's name far beyond Bali.

Architecture

Balinese sea-temple architecture in grey coral limestone, terraced along a cliff edge