Calon Arang

Calon Arang is a widow of the village of Girah whose daughter no one will court because people fear her mother. She therefore brings plague upon Airlangga's realm. The king sends Mpu Bharadah, who overcomes her through a pupil who marries the daughter and obtains her book.

The story is set in Airlangga's eleventh-century reign and was written down much later. What draws scholarly attention is not its historical accuracy but its structure: plague is explained as the consequence of a social slight, and its resolution is not punishment but a marriage that cancels the slight. That structure is unusual for a story about black magic, and it is why the story continues to be read.

In Bali the story lives as the Calonarang performance, staged in temple courtyards at particular times, bringing Rangda face to face with Barong. It is not classed as entertainment: it requires ritual preparation, the Rangda mask is treated as a charged object kept in the temple, and performances may induce trance in players and audience alike.

Staging Calonarang for visitors outside its time and place is therefore a matter of argument within Bali, with some villages separating ceremonial from theatrical performance by using different masks. The distinction is not always visible to an audience, and this encyclopedia names it because without it a performance watched by tourists will be taken for a ceremony witnessed.