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They endeavor to construe all marriages as love matches, even unions of cousins. Marriage by mock capture, however, most clearly acknowledges in a ritual act the love ethos so important to persons approaching marriage. A rich lore outlines the dangers for the personalities involved if love is denied. Stories describe brides who, when married against their will, run amuck at their weddings, grow demented, and produce deformed offspring. When asked about their life histories, informants frequently stress the romance of their adventure of capture: those whose marriages were prearranged sometimes regret missing the excitement of capture. Native views about individual choice and the romantic attraction of distinct personalities and their importance in personal, social, and cosmic stability are most vividly expressed in the Panji and Malat tales found throughout Bali.
One complication in elopement concerns varying customs of bride-purchase payment, here summarized by Belo:
It is generally said of -Bali, that-marriage is by abduction, the husband subsequently making a payment to the bride's father, It is true that this custom is widespread. There is much evidence to show that the form of arranged marriage planned to link the households of relatives and friends, and without monetary compensation, is the older and more characteristic procedure. In fact, the old men of Sayan vellage I say that in their generation (before the Dutch occupation), girls were often stolen from one village by the young men of an enemy village, but that, instead of the husband's making a payment to the bride's father, the father would make a payment to the young man so that the girl should be returned to her village and the marriage dissolved. To have one's daughter marry in a hostile village was to lose sight of her completely. They say that if the match is suitable the father asks no payment, and only if he were angry would he require compensation of the bridegroom (1936).

Evidently, even precolonial matters of bride-purchase were circumstantial. In general, the purchase money reimbursed the woman's group for its loss of an attendant to the household gods (Korn 1932). Practices involving widows and divorced women suggest that payment was riot the complement of a positive exchange but the retribution for a total loss. Currently, in areas where overlords have lost their
influence, whether any bride-purchase is paid depends on the parties involved and on pressures brought to bear by various organizations - hamlet, desa, or even irrigation society, if antagonism is rife. But the important point is that capture occur without compensation and sometimes sustains relations of hostility, thus converting- individual captures into more social affairs.

Furthermore, under certain conditions another important social implication obtains. In a region marked by intense status drive among commoner ancestor-toups, C. Geertz related the elaborate rites of capture, the fanfare of elopement, to

Thus, whenever a patrilineally defined title-group i.e, named temple group exogamous marriage takes place, the group from which the woman comes must at least profess to regard it as a mis-caste alliance, for to do otherwise would be to admit officially to a lower status under the hypergamy rule. As a result, almost all