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Music of Kebyar
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Continued...

the new respect generated by European romanticism for the humble and even unseemly usages. Together with F.A. Liefrinck's documents on irrigation in northern Bali and western Lombok, these compilations corrected earlier exaggerations of the role played by royal courts in integrating Balinese society. As Swellengrebel has indicated, this post-1849 research perhaps succeeded too well

They developed an eye for the special significance of the desa community and its culture, so different from that of the court sphere. The emerging picture of Bali became more varied and variegated than before, and richer in details - so much so that scholars sometimes threatened to be drowned in particulars and variants. Writers became more and more cautious with generalization (1960).
What began as a reaction against too much emphasis on the court sphere, ended as an over isolation and a reification of the desa community.

Before reviewing how the twentieth century catalogued this prescientism ethnoraphy, we should at least sample its engaging descriptions. Most studies remained literally sketches, to illustrate varied aspects of Balinese life: daily routines, cures and diseases, black magic, cremation, and so forth. We can take as a convenient example of these rambling accounts R. van Eck's study of the cockfight.
Liefritick had pinpointed a practical aspect of Bali's favorite pastime in details on harvest festivals at irrigation temples
Each sawah owner must provide a certain number of cocks proportionate to the size of his holding. Those who fail to do so, the owners of cocks that refuse to fight are fined half a guilder per cock. The fine and the proceeds of the percentage levy on the stake money are used to defray the costs of the festival (1969).

In 1879 van Eck provides a fuller description. He deems cockfights the Indian passion; fie feels the Balinese case should serve to illustrate its importance among Javanese (before it was outlawed) and Bu2inese, Makassarese, and Malay peoples in general. This 'life and death battle' of cocks at temple gates is an expiatory offering (Zoen offers) for the players. It is a 'national institution' of varying scope. There are two-month contests with high, stakes, supported by rajas for the population at large, excepting priests, on specific holidays. There are also shorter contests at lower stakes and local fights either for the members of a village-area (tetajen desa) or an irriQation society (tetajen subak) after harvest. Van Eck notes the high costs of betting, the role of moneylenders. and the fervent desire of every Balinese to possess a winning cock, which no offer would cause him to give up: 'He'd sooner sell you his wife. The gambling addict, 'if necessary, would bet his costly Kris, his hard-earned paddy, yes, even his wife and children.' The latter remark is no exaggeration'; and van Eck cites cases of men who lost their families on a cock-fight. Debtors are jailed; only the moneylenders get rich, Finally after the tally of social costs, 'it is time that we witness something. of such a cockfight.' Van Eck describes the open tent over a stepped-down ampitheater with its quarters for audience, players, and referees, and the innermost area where 'the bloody battle is waged.' Then he evokes the entire scene with stylistic verve: