Rangda

In Balinese narrative and legendarium Rangda is linguistically tied to an Old Javanese term meaning "widow" and is associated in stories with the legendary witch Calon Arang and with accounts of Queen Mahendradatta in Javanese-Balinese histories. In these narratives a grieving or humiliated widow/master of black magic summons Leyaks and evil spirits to wreak disease and crop failure; royal and ritual responses (for example, King Airlangga calling the empu/holy man Empu Bharada and his disciple Empu Bahula) form the story-cycle by which her threat is confronted. Some local traditions and retellings identify or link Rangda with Calon Arang or with Mahendradatta, but sources present these as connected narrative identifications within Balinese myth rather than a single fixed historical fact.

Traditionally represented in Balinese mask-and-costume performance as a frightening, aged female figure: often portrayed as largely nude in theatrical costume, with long unkempt hair, pendulous breasts, clawed hands, and wearing a goggle-eyed fanged mask with a long protruding tongue. This visual type appears consistently in Barong-Rangda dances and related theatrical art forms.

In the Calon Arang legend and related Balinese accounts Rangda is depicted as leading Leyaks (evil witch-spirits) and as responsible for harms such as disease, plague, damage to crops, and attacks on children. She is described as a master of black magic in narrative sources, able to summon or direct malevolent spirits; her menace is principally social and cosmological—providing a personalized supernatural explanation for misfortune that ritual specialists and village protectors must address.