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

Story of Bali, Indonesia

Continued...

life. Rather, knowing that the colonial administration had to promote Western concepts of human rights, lie tried to plot the way best to preserve the rich variations of Balinese culture from a roughshod application of Dutch legal standards. If his work exaggerated the autonomy of each local dorps republik, it was partly to defend all locales front being reduced to average cases:

It is the great sorrow of the foremost scholar on Bali, V.E. Korn that the Netherlands authority, because of its tendency toward centralization, bypassed too rashly the adat and the freedoms of the different villages with their very diverse regulations, and that it greatly overestimated the Hinduization of Bali.
The strength of Korn's Het Adatrecht varl Bali-unrelenting insistence on variation from village-area to village-area or court to court - is its weakness as well.
This sea of detail can be fished for bits of insight but provides few overall conclusions. Even current Dutch fieldworkers bemoan its tenebrous density and the heady specifics which undermine many a generalization about things Balinese. To a large extent, ethnography here lost sight of ethnology's task of epitomizing the
whole, but for a once-understandable cause. Yet in its day, Korn's study appeared less desultory, since it imposed relative order on the rambling data then available, for example, the deeds, legal formulas, proverbs, village regulations, native descriptions of customary law, royal edicts, and so on documented in the Adatrechtbundels.
A single illustration from this literature should convey its own unwieldy detail. This legal report on a case contesting an adoption procedure appeared in Indische Gids in 1922 and in Balinese and English in Adatrechtbundels, 1930.
Deed of adoption of a female sentana (family continuator), not being the daughter of the adopting man himself; abridged. - Tabanan, Bali, 1890.
Probation document for Pan Sukarja living in-the village of Mambang and being under the authority of the pemekel 1 Gde Dewi who lives in the quarter Tegal, village Tabanan; these 1 Gde Dewi and Pan Sukarja being both subject to the Prince.

The said Pan Sukarja has asked permission to yield his own daughter Ni Reganti, whereas she has been asked for by Pan Sukarni living in the village of Mambang and being under the authority of the pamekel Nang Mirit who lives in the quarter Grogak Kanginan village Tabanan; these Nang Mirit and Pan Sukarni being both subject to the Prince.

The Prince did already grant his assent.
Further, the reason why Pan Sukarni has asked for the said Ni Reganti is in order to use her as a sentana.
In case afterwards a villager from any of the four castes, within the jurisdiction of the same bale agung, happens to elope with Ni Reganti and is willing to be taken up in Pan Sukarni house as a sentana, there will be no objection against this elopement. If, however, he is not disposed to be taken up in Pan Sukarni house as a sentana, then the elopement with Ni Reganti will be unlawful: the maiden and the youngster must be separated immediately, the youngster moreover paying a fine of 24.500 kepeng this fine is to be proffered to the Lord under whose jurisdiction the woman is.
The village chief and the quarter chief have already accepted Pan Sukarni communication as related above.

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