Advantages
Music of Kebyar
Commoners
Temporal Perspectives
Village Fields
Knowledge
Magnificent
Betutu
Evidences
Tropical
Mahendradatta
Music of Kebyar
Administrative

Continued...

Grassroots control

Liefrirnck discovered that the subak system worked upwards from the grass roots, that it was fundamentally local and in principle democratically controlled. The role of the rajas appeared to be distinctly marginal, as lie describes in the following passage:

While land was sometimes opened up by order of the rulers for their own advantage, in general they refrained from taking any initiative as regards large-scale land clearage or the digging of new irrigation conduits, for they had to reckon with the independent spirit of their subjects (1969).

Nearly every aspect of the elaborate irrigation process remained under local initiative: terracing ravines; developing the intricate plans of dams, channels, culverlets, and so on that conveyed water in equity to the maximum number of paddy fields along a given watershed; planting, cultivating, maintaining, and protecting irrigated plots; and harvesting, storing, and distributing their product. Yet, in a way still not perfectly understood, the raja personified what this delicate system made possible: equal access to water.

Ownership of the water in the river and the wells [sources of the irrigation supply I is vested in the ruler and the ruler may dispose of it as he wishes. This concept differs from the principle applying in the same connection in other countries. In Java and Italy, for example, where water is no less essential for group cultivation, well water is regarded as being the property of the owner of the land on which the well is located. In Java, ownership of the river water is not encompassed by any definitive ruling. There is much to commend the concept of absolute rights of ownership vested in the ruler providing the ruler exercises these rights judiciously for the well-being of all his subjects. It is a means of obviating the arbitrary assumption of control over river water by occupants of ground along the upper reaches of the streams who are otherwise inclined to ignore the consequences for the crops on lower-lying ground (1969).

In Buleleng Liefrinck records a literal control of water by the rajas:
The right to permanent use of this water is ceded by the ruler and in return the applicants are required to pay a yearly levy.
Subsequent investigators have questioned whether the ruler's control over water was actually so direct throughout Hindu-Balinese history (Van Stein Callenfels 1947: 104); it was more likely symbolic than jural. The rajas were symbols that water, versus land, was a translocal coinnioditv and the viability of their court centers depended on assuring that water remained translocal. Their courts achieved this end by elaborating legal and ritual systems that increased both tile feasibility and the appeal of a reliable rice surplus.

The subak system differentiated the complex process of watering paddies from all other areas of domestic and political, but riot religious, life. Building on Lie...