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Type C: endogamy An ancestor temple focuses a group's religious needs inward and articulates a practical social organization that complements values on inmarriage. Ancestral descent ideology favors endogamous wives; ancestor-temple ritual elaborates ceremonies whose proper observance requires women descended from the ancestors. honored. Factious classificatory brothers are reunited if one marries the other's actual sister. Our first social register of endogamy refers to this general preference for marrying a generational peer within an ancestor-temple group, with no importance attached to precise genealogical degrees. Moreover, however near the relation, for the purposes of the prearrangement, ceremonies can be conducted and the bride fetched just as with unrelated spouses. An intratemple marriage parallels an intertemple marriage, but the social units involved are houseyards claming the same ancestry. As a social strategy, the endogamous preference does not specify marriage with a particular patricousin category, whether first cousin (misan), second cousin (mindon) or more distant relation, but merely with an age-grade comrade. Balinese, endogamy implies two primary guidelines: (1) marry a generational peer; (2) marry in your ancestor temple. Often -members of an ancestor-group describe their unions as one houseyard or section of houseyards marrying another. The actual genealogical relations between spouses can be very complicated because of past endogamous marriages. When a new endogamous union is to occur, a primary consideration is whether the individuals are generational peers; never is an elder generational female allowed to wed a younger generational male, and the opposite is tolerated but regarded as inauspicious. Any overarching concern with actual degrees of cousins relates to traditions of caste-status, this is the complicating factor in ancestor-group endogamy, sometimes called 'family marriage' (Ind. kawin keluarga). Thus preferences for patriparallet-cousin marriage here cannot properly be regarded as the mere inverse of cross-cousin-type marriage rules. They do not define the limits of preferable marriages; nothing about patriparallet-cousin marriage values precludes cross-cousin marriages or other possible unions (cf. Patai 1965). Moreover, an articulate concern with relative degrees of patricousins is not merely a functional means to 'cement' seditious groups. As H. and C. Geertz argue (1975), endogamous marriages can help recement Balinese ancestor-groups. But a more important point for us is that any such functional advantage would accrue to the va-tie value on marrying inside a temple, without the parties bothering carefully to distinguish collateral degrees. Mere functional cohesion cannot explain the Balinese interest in the first second cousin distinction (misan-mindon) which we shall consider later. Moreover, while an endogamous union reconnects male collaterals by a sister-wife' link, the union can as easily aggravate factions and even permanently splinter a group. It is as dubious functionally to explain parallel-cousin marriage as intragroup cement as it is to explain cross-cousin marriage as intergroup cement (cf. Boon and Schneider 1974). Nor can the Balinese case be identified with certain controversial explanations of some Middle Eastern systems. Balinese marriage offers no sure advantages in consolidating property that might conceivably apply in societies in which daughters inherit land or are necessarily dowered (cf. Murphy and
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Village
Fields Traditions Representatives Relationships Residential Ancestor Ngerainin Social Matrix High Status Subak Technical Term Dutch Control Afterbirth Ritual Limits Tabanan Bureucrats Urbanization Cultural Psycological Rama Romesh Social Register Precolonial Public Marriage Travelling Endogamy Articulates Brahmana Family Marriage Restriction Documented |
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we must point out a very important distinction which the Balinese make between
two clearly separate groups of ancestors. The first of these groups consists
of the dead who are riot yet completely purified. This group is in turn subdivided
in pirata, those riot yet cremated, and pitara, those already cremated. The
former are still completely impure; the latter have been purified, but are still
considered as distinct, individual souls. The second group consists of the completely
purified ancestors who are considered as divine. Everything Bali Indonesia |