Advantages
Music of Kebyar
Commoners
Temporal Perspectives
Village Fields
Knowledge
Magnificent
Betutu
Evidences
Tropical
Mahendradatta
Music of Kebyar
Administrative

Note the exchange of women between Groups 11 and Ill. Although group 1 has always received women, it is not automatically the highest. Groups 1 and 11 use reciprocal generational terms, and Group 11 women marry into Group 1 as equals.9 j ' Group 11 explains its repeated loss of women by a rajalike decree by its past leader that Group 1 could receive them. (Its persistent provider role is explained by citing, the rule against a daughter marrying back to the place of her mother, to be discussed later.) By such cultural devices, egalitarian alliances are sustained. These multiple ' marriage connections are called mekilit - like a knotted thread.' This possible two-way flow of women, which some informants characterize as a modern development, again illustrates the secondary nature of hypergamous principles in Bali.

It should not be inferred from the diagram that egalitarian ties across groups are always smooth and harmonious. An offshoot of Group 1, for example, living several kilometers to the north claims descent from Arya Batin Jero, an important noble line in the northern district Buleleng. Although the Dutch refused to recognize them as such during the colonial period, members of this group today still claim the elevated title Gusti informally. This policy divides them from Group 1 itself, which settles for the lower title Gde to facifitate strong relations with Group 11, their banjar associates and very influential backdoor neighbors.

We shall later return to such matters of titles and status. Here it is important to emphasize that every beraya relationship has a complex history, and informants can state clearly both their advantages and their drawbacks. This fact can be illustrated by the recollections of a man from Group 11 above who had taken his wife from Group III:

If there had not already been beraya feelings between my house and my wife's, 1 would never have been able to go around there to court her. People generally feel ashamed, reticent (sengan) to set foot in this Pasek courtyard (elevated Sudra administrators] unless for an important practical need. When 1 first began courting, my wife's 'father' told my father that if my father's uncle had not once sheltered him in public office, 1 would have been chased from there in rough fashion!

Now, if I'm traveling around Bali and come to a place like Busung Biu without any money, 1 will quickly be received as if 1 were a pedanda priest, when the village leader learns who my wife is [an offshoot of her group traditionally provides leaders in Busung Biu . That's what counts in Bali: tracing you back to your group to see what you are. If you make a good outside marriage it is called 'broadening the houseyard' (melingahin nata), so that you have a lot of beraya. My marriage was broadening indeed!
In summary, alliances between groups produce networks of cooperation in which power, title, and wealth are calculated by the parties concerned. A group insures its daughter's participation in ancestral ceremonies, since berayas extend invitations to each others' rites. Thus, prearranged marriage with outsiders, while not the ultimate means (that is, endogamy) a group has to preserve its own women, avoids the loss of them altogether, with the accessory advantage of an often useful perpetual alliance.