{"id":8887,"date":"2010-03-25T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-03-25T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2010\/03\/25\/indonesia-s-hindus-celebrate-saraswati-day\/"},"modified":"2010-03-25T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-03-25T12:00:00","slug":"indonesia-s-hindus-celebrate-saraswati-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2010\/03\/25\/indonesia-s-hindus-celebrate-saraswati-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Indonesia&#8217;s Hindus Celebrate Saraswati Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Source: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thejakartapost.com\/news\/2010\/03\/01\/hindus-celebrate-saraswati-day.html\">www.thejakartapost.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>JAKARTA, INDONESIA, March 1, 2010: Thousands of Hindus crammed into Tirta Empul temple in Tampaksiring, Gianyar, on Sunday for a self-purification ritual in conjunction with Saraswati, the day of praise for the goddess of knowledge. Children and adults came to the temple in droves to conduct banyu pinaruh, a bathing ritual, which is performed to eliminate negative influences from their souls and ask for blessings from Saraswati.<\/p>\n<p>Putu Sudirta came all the way from Denpasar with his family to perform the ritual. &#8220;We usually call this rite melukat, or cleansing ourselves of bad things,&#8221; said the 35-year-old man. &#8220;I came here because this place is special. It has a sanctified water source, which is believed to possess a spiritual power to purify ourselves.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>On Saraswati day, Hindu people celebrate the knowledge bestowed by the Goddess. Over the day they worship books and other symbols of knowledge by performing prayers and making offerings.<\/p>\n<p>[HPI note: The puja honoring Saraswati (and the main Navaratri festival) happens on a different date in most of India.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source: www.thejakartapost.com JAKARTA, INDONESIA, March 1, 2010: Thousands of Hindus crammed into Tirta Empul temple in Tampaksiring, Gianyar, on Sunday,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8887\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}