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Story of Bali, Indonesia
could as well apply to Bali. Many technical terms have been suggested for these status systems - somehow supratribe yet still substate. Most of the terms are based on kinship lineage rules, and they seem inadequate since they omit the sense of holistic statehood that is vividly expressed during the ritual display and/or consumption of a surplus by the society's entire population or by some representative sample. The importance of this holistic self-image in such systems is particularly conspicuous in Bali because of its elaboration of a Hindu-ivar7ta scheme to articulate a native sense of totalized hierarchical universe atop a reliable and abundant rice harvest. In the case of Bali,
lacking an appropriate technical term, we might provisionally think of'
its, subsistencelstatus configuration as one more dimension of the culture's
'romance.' Here we find agriculturalists ritually consuming a surplus
staple in festivals where information can be conveyed to forestall any
threatened shortage, and all to preclude the necessity to market the food
staple that is the object and the subject of their island's principal
cult. Clearly Balinese rice culture remains a challenging and fertile
field for comprehensive comparative studies of subsistence values - from
India, through the Lesser Sundas of Indonesia, to the Pacific. Groups shift, change, fragment, expand, and migrate; space remains. Part of the indisputable reality behind outsiders' impressions of Bali's profound religiosity concerns the wedding of lore and topography. Balinese refuse to let the legends and stories they append to locales eclipse, in spite of the geographic mobility (epitomized in sacred trek legends) that has probably prevailed for centuries, especially as population has increased with new irrigable land available for settlement. Colonial health measures accelerated population growth, and the Dutch roads and dams enabled irrigation to be extended well beyond the areas cultivated under the traditional subak-technology. Later we shall review Dutch restrictions on caste mobility; here we should note that by territorializing both the spheres of influence of courts and the bonds between lords and subjects, the colonial administration doubtless inhibited traditional geographic mobility, especially across kingdoms. There is no reason not to assume that displacement was frequent in precolonial Bali. Rajas imported religious experts and artisans from other areas; they planted specialist groups wherever new shrines and temples were dedicated, and these groups in turn forged status bonds with the local population. Relocation likely resulted also from journeys to distant festivals at irrigation or state temples where relationships were consolidated far from home. If one can generalize at all from current events, status competition and pervasive antagonism in the home banjar must often have forced groups to migrate either to seek land or to escape punishment for infractions of local adat. While the rajas capitalized on such tendencies, the colonial administration discouraged them altogether; and we can speculate that for the period of
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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 |
