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Story of Bali, Indonesia

Continued...

culture guided the major studies prior to the defeat of Buleleng in 1846 and influenced much of the subsequent research by long-term resident scholars. A heavily opinionated article in the Singapore Chronicle expressed puritanical contempt of many Balinese practices, Yet it managed a few descriptive details concerning, for example, rites to ward off pestilence, especially cholera:

They caused large representations of the most abominable lingum to be made, about 6 or 8 feet long, painted and carved to resemble that shameful emblem as much as possible, to frighten the pestilential devil, by something more impure and revolting than they supposed the soft genius of the cholera to be (Short acet. 1830).
Another vivid instance of the clash of values that lets a little ethnography through is the disdain of practices surrounding twin births:
They have also a singular idea, when a women is brought to bed of twins, that is an unlucky omen, and immediately on its being known, the woman with her husband and children are obliged to go and live on the seashore, or among the tombs, for the space of a month to purify themselves, after which they may return into the village upon a suitable sacrifice being made. Thus an evidence of fertility is considered by them unfortunate, and the poor woman and her new-born babes, are exposed to all the inclemency of the weather out of doors, just at the time when they need the most attention.

The major advance over Raffles and Crawfurd comes with information on sources of royal revenue, in particular, the land-tax, which is about 2 rupees (rupiahs) per acre annually, for cultivated rice-fields, nothing being charged on fields cultivated with other products, and this tax, being levied only on the score of the water necessary for irrigation, which is supposed to be the property of the sovereign.

The report mentions payments by Chinese for their control of imports and exports, and income accruing from the marriages of subjects: following a marriage by capture, 20 percent of the compensation money, paid by the husband's group to his wife's group to legitimize the union, goes to the kin. Finally, when marriage or descent breaks down (that is, by divorce or a sonless widow), the afflicted women and their property are appropriated by the court for its pleasure, to serve as concubines, or profitable tradeswornen, or prostitutes. Also, male criminals, cast out of their domestic locales, were sheltered by the court for its use.

By 1830, Balinese royalty appeared to be kings of the water surrounded by the dregs of society, and no one knew by what authority.

The limited image of despots

In 1817 after Britain relinquished the Indies, a Dutch commissioner, H.A. Van den Broek, visited Bali. In 1835, he published his profile of the island's kingdoms and a