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Continued... general description of Balinese social usages. Van den Broek at last considers anew the continual hostility among these 'very religious' kings ( 1835) first glimpsed in Lodewycks' previously mentioned 1597 paraphrase of the royal chronicle. He documents the seesawing royal authority in Karangasem, Lombok, and Buleleng. Moreover, lie alludes to marriages among royal houses of different kingdoms in rioting 'the most important wife of the King (vorst) of Klungkung is usually a princess of Karangasem and lie mentions the bonds of friendship and marriage alliance uniting Badung, Tabanan, Gianyar and Mengwi against Karangasem, Klungkung, and Buleleng. Tabanan, 'one of the greatest and mightiest kingdoms of Bali with its extra-bountiful rice-fields, is contrasted with the smaller, less fruitful, yet more densely populated Klungkung. Yet, ironically, the king of Klungkung enjoys a privileged status over the other ruling houses: The king is named Dewa-agung, which means great god or highest godhead; all the other kings have unlimited and idolizing (onbepaalden enafgodischen) reverence for the King of Klungkung Also, lie never has to fear any invasion into his land, and is never enveloped in wars, unless he himself chooses one or another party, in which case the opponent does not fear, for purposes of defense, to move against him. His portrait of kingdoms includes Karangasem and Jembrana as well, with notes on the Islamic Sasak and Buginese populations within these areas. There is already an implicit assumption that these flanking kingdoms are a diminution from the Klungkung. ideal. Van den Brock appreciates Tabanan kingdom's economic advantages, yet his Hindu spectacles prevent viewing the different regions as different adaptations to variable land and climate, defense needs, trade opportunities, and so forth. The flexibility of Balinese courtly institutions, especially where they face out on non-Hindu populations, should have been given a weight equal to their capacity to perpetuate and to replicate a Hindu-Javanese sacred ideal. Yet Van den Brock's successors also stressed the Javanese timelessness of Balinese culture and made minimal comparisons eastward. In particular, when V.E. Korn came to explain the divergent village-area of Tenganan (1933), he conceptualized it predominantly as pre-Bali-Hindu rather than as part of the culture-area stretching on to Lombok, Sumbawa, and beyond. Van den Brock follows his profile of kings and kingdoms with a provocative report on Balinese customs. He documents the prejudices of the priests and kings against the original inhabitants of Bali and presents a theory of caste which, more than a list of the four warna-categories, correlates warna with varieties of death rites: they have even as
the Hindus four castes; the first is the Priestly, the second the Royal
( Vorstelijke), the third the Middlecaste, and the fourth the Low or common
caste. The corpses of the first two named are burned with great pomp,
even as takes place among Brahmana s, those of the middlecaste are buried,
and those of the lower caste are left above ground by the side of the
road, a prey to weather and scavengers.
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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 |
