THE PEOPLE

      LIKE A CONTINUAL UNDER-SEA BALLET, the pulse of life in Bali moves with a measured rhythm reminiscent of the sway of marine plants and the flowing motion of octopus and jellyfish under the sweep of a submarine current. There is a similar correlation of the elegant and decorative people with the clear-cut, extravagant vegetation; of their simple and sensitive temperament with the fertile land.

No other race gives the impression of living in such close touch with nature, creates such a complete feeling of harmony between the people and the surroundings. The slender Balinese bodies are as much a part of the landscape as the palms and the breadfruit trees, and their smooth skins have the same tone as the earth and as the brown rivers where they bathe; a general colour scheme of greens, grays, and ocher's, relieved here and there by bright-coloured sashes and tropical flowers. The Balinese belong in their environment in the same way that a bumming-bird or an orchid belongs in a Central American jungle, or a steel-worker belongs in the grime of Pittsburgh. It was depressing to watch our Balinese friends transplanted to the Paris Fair. They were cold and miserable there in the middle of the summer, shivering in heavy overcoats or wrapped in blankets like red Indians, but they were transformed into normal, beautiful Balinese as soon as they returned from their unhappy experience.

Today the beauty of the Balinese has been exploited to exhaustion in travelogues and by tourist agencies, but as far back as 1619 records mention that Balinese women were in great demand in the slave markets of Bourbon (Reunion), where " they brought as much as 150 florins." The traffic in Balinese slaves continued until 1830, and today there is a colony of Balinese in Batavia, the descendants of former slaves. Their reputation for beauty is well justified: the majority of the population are handsome, with splendid physique and with a dignified elegance of bearing, in both men and women of all ages. From childhood the women walk for miles carrying-heavy loads on their heads; this gives them a great co-ordination of movement, a poised walk and bodily fitness. Old women retain their strength and do not become bent hags. We were astonished at times to discover that the slender, straight silhouette we bad admired from a distance belonged to an old lady with gray hair, walking with ease under forty or fifty pounds of fruit or pottery. Unless physically disabled, elderly people never admit that they are too old or too weak for activity; to " give up " would be dangerous to physical and spiritual health and would render a person vulnerable to attacks of a supernatural character.

Ordinarily free of excessive clothing, the Balinese have small but well-developed bodies, with a peculiar anatomical structure of simple, solid masses reminiscent of Egyptian and Mycenaean sculptures: wide shoulders tapering down in unbroken lines to flexible waists and narrow hips; strong backs, small heads, and firm full breasts. Their slender arms and long legs end in delicate hands and feet, kept skilful and alive by functional use and dance training. Their faces have well-balanced - features, expressive The Beach in Sanur
eyes, small noses, and full mouths, and their hair is thick and glossy. Because they are tanned by the sun, their golden-brown skin appears generally darker than it really is, and when seen at a distance, people bathing are considerably whiter around their middles, where the skin is usually covered by clothes, giving the impression that they wear light-coloured pants. Watching a crowd of semi-nude Balinese of all ages, one cannot help wondering what the comparison would be should men and women of our cities suddenly appear in the streets nude above the waist.

Their character is easy, courteous, and gentle, but they can be intense and can show strong temper if aroused. They are gay and witty; there is nothing that a Balinese loves more than a good joke, especially. if it is off-colour, and even children make ribald puns that are applauded by grown-ups. It is perhaps in their mad sense of humour, the spirit of Rabelaisian fun with which they handle even such forbidding subjects as religion and death, that lies the key to their character. The adjective " childish " or 11 childlike," so often misapplied to primitive peoples, does not suit the Balinese, because even the children show a sophistication often lacking in more civilized grown-ups. They are resourceful and intelligent, with acute senses and quick minds. Once, when I mentioned the goodness of a very short friend, the immediate reply was: " How could he be otherwise, be is so small! " One day Spies's monkey got loose and ran all over the house upsetting and breaking things. All the Balinese boys chased the monkey, but it let them come to within a few feet of it and then leaped out of reach onto the roof or a tree. The only one who did not join in the chase was Rapung, our teacher of Balinese, because he was a newcomer to the household and the monkey snarled and sprung at him every time Rapung passed near where it was tied: they bated each other. When it became plain that the monkey could not be captured so easily, one of the boys had the bright idea of having everybody pretend to attack Rapung, imitating the monkey, making faces, and squealing at him. Soon the monkey forgot that be himself was persecuted and joined in the attack, but when he was most aggressive someone grabbed him.

The pride of the Balinese has not permitted the development of one of the great professions of the East: there are no beggars in Bali. But tourists who lure boys and girls with dimes to take their pictures now threaten this unique distinction, and lately, in places frequented by tourists, people are beginning to ask for money as a return for a service. Ordinarily even a child would be scolded and shamed by anyone who heard him ask something from a stranger. A gift must be reciprocated and we were often embarrassed by the return presents of our poor neighbors. We gave Ketut Adi, a little dancer of eight, a scarf of no great value; one day soon after she came to us with a basket of rice, some eggs, and a live chicken, carried by her mother because the load was too great for her. Children of the neighborhood that Rose had treated for infected wounds always came back with presents of fruit, cakes, or rice which they handed casually to our house-boy, never mentioning them to us, as if they wanted to avoid making a demonstration of their generosity. Even children have a strong sense of pride.

The aristocracy is despotic and arrogant, but the ordinary people, although used to acknowledging the superiority of their masters, are simple and natural in an unservile and unsubmissive way. By the threat of passive disobedience and boycott they kept the princes from overstepping their bounds. Europeans complain that the Balinese make bad servants; they are too free, too frank, and do not respond to the insolent manner that the white man has adopted as " the only way to deal with natives."
Their moral code consists in maintaining their traditional behavior, observing their duties towards their fellow villagers and paying due respect to the local feudal princes. Among themselves they are kind and just, avoiding unnecessary quarrels and solving their disputes by the simplest and most direct methods. .1 The villages are organized into compact boards or councils, independent of other villages. Every married man - that is, every grown man - is a member of the council and is morally and physically obliged to co-operate for the welfare of the community. A man is assisted by his neighbors in every task he cannot perform alone; they help him willingly and as a matter of duty, not expecting any reward other than the knowledge that, were they in his case, he would help in the same manner. In this way paid labors and the relation of boss to coolie are reduced to a minimum in Bali. Since the world of a Balinese is his community, be is anxious to prove his worth, for his own welfare is in direct relation to his social behaviors and his communal standing. Moral sanctions are regarded 2S stronger than physical punishment, and no one will risk the dreaded punishment of exile, from the village, when a man is publicly declared " dead " to his community. Once " thrown away," he cannot be admitted into another of the co-operative villages, so no misfortune could be greater to the Balinese than public disgrace. This makes of every village a closely unified organism in which the communal policy is harmony and co-operation - a system that works to every body's advantage.

By their ingenuity and constant activity they have raised their main occupation, the cultivation of rice, to levels unsurpassed by other rice-growing nations. Being essentially agriculturists, they are not interested in navigation and trade; living the easy life of the tropics, they are satisfied and well fed. The majority works the land for themselves, so they have not yet become wage earners and have enough freedom and leisure left to dedicate to spiritual relaxation. They are extraordinarily fond of music, poetry, and dancing, which have produced a remarkable theatre. Their culture, unlike that of their cultural ancestors, the Javanese, is not yet in frank declin6. Even the common people are better agriculturists, better craftsmen and artists than the average Javanese. The Balinese are by no means a primitive people.

Moreover, unlike the natives of the South Seas and similar races under white domination, the Balinese are not a dying people; far from that, in the last ten years a constant increase in the birth rate has been recorded. The 1930 census gave the population of Bali as 1,148,000 people, or about 500 to the square mile, an enormous figure when compared with the 41 per square mile of the United States. This includes the foreign population: 7,1935 Chinese, 1,544 Arabs and other Mohammedans, and 411 Europeans, of which only a small percentage are of pure European stock, the rest being Eurasians and certain Balinese, Javanese, Chinese, and Japanese who are given equal standing with Europeans by a decree making them " Staatsblad European."

For those interested in knowing something of the racial origins of the Balinese, it may be added that they are by no means a pure race, but a complicated mixture of the native aborigines, with superimposed layers of higher cultures of various types.' The Balinese are descendants of a pure " Indonesian " race mixed with the Hindus of Central and East Java, who were them selves Indonesians of Hindu culture, with Indian and Chinese blood. To these mixtures are further added traces of the Polynesian and Melanesian, the result being a picturesque variety of types among the Balinese: from the noble Hindu and Northern Chinese, to the Malay-Javanese, Polynesian, and even Papuan. While some have sleek hair, high nose bridges, and cream-yellow skins, some are dark and curly haired like South Sea Islanders. Some have large almond eyes, often with the " Mongoloid fold, convex noses, and. fine mouths; others have the concave, flat, broad
Noses, the squinty eyes, bulging foreheads, and prognathic. Jaws of the more primitive Indonesians. Thus the Balinese of today are the same people as the Hindu-Javanese of pre-Mohammedan Java, in the sense that they both underwent the same racial.

 THE ANCIENT SURVIVAL: THE BALI AGA

At one time the island was populated by pure Indonesians, an ancient people who filed and blackened their teeth. They lived in small communities, family clans ruled by a council of Elders who acted as the priests of their religion. Their cult centered in the worship of the powerful spirits of nature, and especially those of their ancestors, with whom they continued to live, a great family of both the dead and the living. Occasionally, by means of mediums and sacrifices, they brought their ancestral spirits down to this earth to protect them. They buried their dead or simply abandoned them in the jungle to be carried away by the spirits, and it is possible that they even ate parts of the bodies in order to absorb the magic power inherent in their ancient headmen,

The pure descendants of these people, calling themselves Bali Aga or Bali Mula, the " original " Balinese, still live, isolated and independent, in the mountains where they found refuge from imperialistic strangers. Hidden in the bills of East Bali, near Karangasem, lies the village of Tenganan, where the most conservative of the Bali Aga preserve the old traditions with the greatest zeal. Tenganan is a rabidly isolated community, socially and economically separate from the rest of Bali, almost a republic in itself. It is shut off from the world by a solid wall that surrounds the entire village, which is meant to keep outsiders away, and is broken only by four gates, each facing one of the cardinal points. Of these gates, three open to the gardens and plantations of the village, but the main gate is so narrow that a stout person has difficulty in squeezing through. Such is the obsession for isolation in Tenganan that there is an official specially appointed to sweep the village after the visits of strangers, to obliterate their footprints.

We became acquainted with I-Tanggu, a youngish man with fingernails four inches long, who was the perbekel of Tenganan, the representative of his village with the Dutch Government. We were surprised to find him quite sociable. Once we played bost to him in Den Pasar and from then on we were often invited to visit Tenganan. Unlike the rest of the villages in Bali, there is hardly any vegetation around the Tenganan houses, which are all exactly alike and are arranged in tows on each side of stone-paved avenues. In the central place is the council house where the Elders meet, a long shed about ten feet wide by some seventy feet long, strongly built and apparently very old. Farther along are other buildings for public use, the purpose of some kept a secret. The most curious are the unique mill for grinding kemiri nuts to obtain oil, and the wooden Ferris-wheel, usually dismantled, in which the women revolve for hours in a strange rite. The dwelling of I-Tanggu' is just like all the others: a small gate reached by a flight of steps leads into a court in which are the sleeping-quarters, the kitchen, and a long house for relatives and for storage'. There is also a small empty shrine where the spirits may rest when they visit their descendants.

The people of Tenganan are tall, slender, and aristocratic in a rather ghostly, decadent way, with light skins and refined manners. The majority of the men still wear their hair long. They are proud and look down even on the Hindu-Balinese nobility, who respect them and leave them alone. They live in a strange communistic or, rather, patriarchal-communalistic system in which individual ownership of property is not recognized and in which even the plans and measurements of the houses are set and alike for everybody. The village of Tenganan owns communally enormous tracts of fertile and well-cultivated lands that fill every need of the village and make it one of the richest in the island. I-Tanggu' told me this legend of how the land came to belong to the village:
" Hundreds of years ago, long before the Hindu-Javanese set. tled in, Bali, the powerful king Bedaulu lost his favorites horse. Broken-hearted, the king sent the men of whole villages in all directions with orders to find the stray horse. The Tenganans went eastward until, after days of travel, they found the corpse of the horse. The king asked them to name their reward, but their spokesman said they wanted only the land where the horse was found; that is, the area covered by the smell of the carcass. Although the horse bad been dead for many days under the tropical sun, Bedaulu considered this a modest request and sent an official with a delicate sense of smell to measure off the land, starting from the place where the horse lay. Accompanied by the chief of Tenganan, he walked for days, but no matter how far the two went, the smell seemed to follow them. Finally the official was exhausted and could go no farther; he said be considered the land already covered enough, and e Tenganans were satisfied. When the official left, the chief pulled from under his clothes a large piece of the rotten flesh of the horse."

I-Tanggu' told me the story as we went up to the top of a bill to look at one of the remains of the famous horse; the penis, " which had turned to stone." On the summit, under a large tree, was the relic, a long river stone shaped like a phallus by the action of water. Passing people had left offerings on top of it. I-Tanggu' also said that the people of Tenganan are not permitted to work their vast lands with their own bands, but hire other Balinese to do the agricultural work for them. The aristocratic communists of Tenganan go to the plantation only to make tuak, beer from sugar palms. I

On the way down the hill, I was allowed a glimpse of the sacred temple of Tenganan, of which we had heard mysterious reports. It was a small enclosure under a great banyan tree surrounded by a low wall of uncut stones roughly piled up. Inside were a few mounds of the same stones, reminiscent of altars, and in one of them there was a larger stone with what appeared to be a natural cavity. I could not go into the enclosure because no outsider is ever permitted to enter it. I-Tanggu could not divulge the purpose of such a primitive " temple " and could not even name the deities worshipped there, but be added mysteriously that there were three of them It seems extraordinary that this pile of stones is the only sacred, " essential " place of worship for the Tenganans, who are expert carvers and fine artists.'

just outside the village I bad seen a regular Balinese-style temple with fine roofs and elaborate carvings, but this, I-Tanggu said with contempt, did not mean much to them and was more for the use of their Balinese guests and coolies, perhaps as a concession to the official cult of the island, so that they would not be considered as savages, people without a " proper " temple.

The clubs of virgins (seka daha) and of adolescent boys (seka truna), who are still untouched by the magical impurity supposed to come from sexual intercourse, are an interesting feature of Bali Aga villages not to be found among the Hindu-Balinese. In Tenganan a ceremonial meeting is held for them once a year. The virgins wear golden crowns covered with quivering flowers of beaten gold, and are dressed from the armpits to the ground in bright silk scarfs which they bold between jewelled fingers, often tipped with -four-inch artificial fingernails made ' of solid gold. They appear dancing the redjang, arranged in line from the smallest baby, a year old, perhaps, to the grown girls who on past occasions have failed to obtain a husband. They dance accompanied by the gamelan selunding, an ancient, rarely beard orchestra that has great iron sound-plates, struck energetically by the old men of the village with oversize wooden hammers. This dance could not be more archaic and simple: standing in a double line, they fling the scarfs slowly away, first to one side, then to the other, half turning the body each time. In the long intervals between movements they stand motionless with down cast eyes until a change of position is announced by the orchestra. This is the whole dance a slow-motion version of the stilted feminine dances of Java, giving, one an unearthly feeling of. suspended movement, and bearing no relation to the exuberant vitality of the Balinese dances we were accustomed to see.

Soon boys in their best clothes and wearing krisses begin to Appear and form a group at the other end of the dancing-space, watching the girls. When enough boys have gathered, the music stops and the audience, mostly women, shows a lively interest. The music begins again, playing the theme for the abuang, a dance in which the boys express their preferences. One by one the girls step to the front to show. Them selves in. a short posed dance with their eyes on the ground and their arms tensely outstretched. Each of the marriageable girls has her chance, but the boys are shy and at first nobody takes up the challenge. It is only after the girls have danced a second or third round that one of the boys overcomes his shyness, walks up to his favourite girl when her turn comes again, and takes his place in a stately dance. If she is pleased, she will continue to dance with him until the bar of music is over, but if she dislikes the boy, she leaves the floor line while the crowd laughs at the rejected and goes back into rejected suitor.

Marriage restrictions are peculiar in Tenganan; their isolationist law allows no one to marry outside the village, and even there only within certain rules as to family and caste. There was, for instance, the daughter of the priest who was already past marriageable age, but who could not find a husband since there were no unmarried men of her class. This continual inbreeding perhaps accounts for the decadent and aristocratic type of the people. A Tenganan who marries outside the village or breaks one of their taboos is thrown out of the village; such exiles have formed a small village of their own just outside the main gate, but they are never again admitted into the mother community.

The Balinese have often accused the Tenganans of cannibalism, which is of course indignantly denied and about which the Tenganans are extremely sensitive. But people from Karangasem and even renegade Tenganans tell naive stories like this:

In olden days there were celebrations in which aged men were sacrificed and eaten, and once there were none left in Tenganan. For a long time the couneil bad planned to rebuild the ba16 agung, the assembly hall, already in ruins. The wood for the pillars bad been cut by the old men years before and was dry and well seasoned. But when the work was started and the time came to put up the pillars, the workers could not proceed, because nobody knew which was the bottom and which the top of the logs. In all Bali it is forbidden in a construction to stand a log " upsidedown " - that is, in the opposite direction from which it grew. Work on the baM agung was interrupted and there was worry and confusion, until a young man announced that, if they swore to stop eating their old men, be would find a way to locate the right end of the logs. After long deliberations the council agreed and presently the young man produced his own grandfather, whom he bad kept bidden for years in a rice granary. The old man measured each log, tied a rope in the exact centre' and had it lifted up; the end closer to the roots was heavier and the log tilted in that direction, so the council could proceed with their work, and old men could continue to live.

I have been told by Balinese that in Tenganan today a corpse is washed with water that is allowed to drip into a sheaf of unhusked rice placed under the body. The rice is then dried in the sun, threshed, and cooked. After the burial a human figure is made of the cooked ricewhich is served to the dead man's descendants, who proceed to eat it, each asking for some part - the bead, an arm, and so forth - a funeral dinner that may well signify the ritual eating of thecorpse to absorb its magical powers. This, of course, is pure hearsay which I could not verify through my Tenganan friends.

The Balinese also believe that human beings were sacrificed in Tengenan to make dyes for their famous ceremonial scarf's, the kamben gringsing, a cloth that, because it is supposed to be dyed with human blood, has the power to insulate the wearer against evil vibrations and is prescribed at all important Balinese rituals. These scarf's, in which the warp is left uncut, are much in demand by the Balinese. The kamben gringsing is a loosely woven, narrow scarf of thick cotton with intricate designs in rich tones of rust-red, beige, and black against a yellowish background. The process of dying and weaving is unbelievably long and complicated, and over five years are required from the time the cotton is prepared to the finished scarf, according to Korn. The threads are left in each of the dyes for months, macerated in kemiri oil for months to fix each colour, and then dried in the sun for months after each stage. The design is obtained by the double ikat " process (ikat ,"to tie") : that is, the threads swarp and weft are patterned previous to the weaving. To do this warp and weft are stretched on frames, and groups of threads are tightly bound with fibres at certain points before they are dipped into the dye, so that the tied part remains uncolored to produce the design. This is repeated with each colour, the part already dyed also protected by the fibred binding. When the threads are
finally colored and ready to be woven, the design of the weft is fitted exactly into the one on the warp, and a mistake spoils the work of years. Taking into consideration the laboriousness of the dyeing, the painstaking, difficult weaving, and the myst6ry that
surrounds the secret process, it is easy to understand why the popular mind has endowed the kamben gringsing with such extraordinary powers. In Tenganan the scarf's are an essential part of ceremonial dress, and I-Tanggu told me that if he sold his he would lose his place in the village council. Only the finest scarf's are worn in Tenganan; imperfect ones or those in which the dyes fail to produce the required tones are sold to outsiders.

In North Bali, on the slopes of the Batur, above Tedakula, is the Bali Aga village of Sembiran, where even the daily language is different from that of the rest of Bali. There, as in Tenganan, the " temple " is a group of rough stone altars surrounded by a neglected fence. It is bidden in the jungle near the edge of a deep ravine, a dangerous haunted place, where not even the people of Sembiran would venture alone. In Sembiran the dead are not buried; after washing the corpse, it is wrapped in new cloth, carried to the edge of the ravine, and deposited on a bamboo platform with offerings, consecrated water, and the belongings of the deceased. There it is left for three days; if, after that, it has not disappeared, this means that the spirits did not care to take it, so it is thrown unceremoniously into the ravine to be eaten by wild beasts.

There are many other mountain villages that have resisted the influence of Hinduism. Although not as extraordinary as Tenganan and Sembiran, they are equally conservative Bali Aga, like Trunyan on the shores of Lake Batur, where the largest statue in Bali is kept, that of Ratu 'Gede' Pantjering Djagat, powerful patron guardian of the village. There is Taro, the home of Kbo Iwa', a fearful giant of pre-Hindu days who was so great that there was never enough food to feed him and he went about eating people. To provide him with a place to sleep, the villagers of Taro built the longest council house in Bali. He is supposed to have carved all the ancient monuments and sculptured caves with his own fingernails. In the highlands between the Batur and the Bratan, the Gunung Agung and the Batukau, there are many Bali Aga villages, and in some, like Selulung, Batukaang, and Catur, there are remains of ancient and primitive monuments; stone statues and small pyramids, some of which are purely Indonesian in character, while others show early Hindu, perhaps Buddhist influence. In the Bali Aga villages there is much that remains of the ancient race who once inhabited all of Bali, but who were to become the fascinating Balinese of today.

 NOTES ON THE HISTORY OF BALI

     It seems difficult to reconcile the soft-mannered, peace-loving Balinese we know with the intrigue and violence of their turbulent past. For a thousand years the history of the island is a series of wars and heroic episodes that reached a dramatic climax only thirty years ago when the Balinese made a desperate but futile last stand against a modem army.

Bali was under the rule of Javanese kings from the earliest days of Hindu Java, but we first bear of Balinese dynasties in the tenth century of our era. In 991 A.D. a child was born of a Balinese king and a Javanese princess. He was named Erlangga and was sent to Java to marry a princess and to become a local chief in the kingdom of his father-in-law. Dharmawangsa, the ruler, was murdered suddenly and Erlangga took charge, saving the kingdom from total collapse and bringing it into even greater glory. Erlangga ruled during thirty difficult years, creating a strong bond between Java and his native Bali, which was then governed by Erlangga's brother in his name. Then, as befits a model hero of Hindu ideas, Erlangga suddenly renounced the kingdom be bad made great and died a hermit under the guidance of his religious teacher, Mpu' Bharadah. Erlangga's kingdom was nearly destroyed by a plague supposedly brought by the dreadful witch Rangda, queen of evil spirits, who was, according to historians, Erlangga's own mother. Out of the mythical struggle between the magic of the witch and that of the great king, arose the legend Calon Arang that made Erlangga the most famous figure of Balinese mythical history. In later years Bali became independent of Java, but was again subjugated in 1284 by the army of Kertanagara, the king of Singasari (of the Tumapel dynasty) . Singasari was destroyed eight years later by the new dynasty of Madjapahit, and Bali again became free, only to be reconquered in 1343 by General Gadja Mada for King Radjasanagara, under whom the entire Archipelago became a vassal of Madjapahit. During the next hundred years the power of the empire was undermined by civil wars and revolts in the colonies,. and soon the great empire went into decline. The Balinese revolted against Madjapahit time and again, but the uprisings were put down in memorable battles, after which military figures like Arya Damar and Gadjah Mada became rulers of Bali and to them the present Balinese aristocracy traces its origin. Gadja Mada was sent to Bali to subjugate the king of the Balinese Pedjeng dynasty, Dalem Bedaulu', who was supposed to have bad the head of a pig. He was the owner of the famous horse of Tenganan. Bedaul' was a semi-demoniac charu

acter of supernatural origin who refused to recognize Madjapahit supremacy. He was defeated by Gadjah Mada, and Bali once more came under Javanese rule. The expeditions of Gadjah Mada were the last military displays of the empire. In the meantime Mohammedan missionaries were becoming influential in Java and were converting princes who proclaimed themselves sultans of their districts, repudiating their allegiance to Madjapahit. Soon peaceful propaganda turned into armed force; Mohammedan fanatics made war on Madjapahit, which finally collapsed after it was weakened by internal trouble. Stutterheim is of the opinion that the empires destruction came gradually somewhere about the' year 1520.

However, in the more picturesque but less reliable historic records (babad) ' it is stated that Madjapahit fell in 1478 under the reign of Bra Widjaya V (Kertabhumi), according to StutteTbeim) . Bra Widjaya was told by his chief priest that after forty days the title of Radja of Madjapahit would cease to exist. The king bad such implicit faith in the prediction that at the expiration of that time he had himself burned alive. His son, unable to withstand the Mohammedan invasion and not daring to disobey the sentence of the priest, escaped to his last remaining colony; followed by his court, his priests, and his artists, be crossed over into Bali, settling on the south coast of Gelgel, at the foot of the Gunung Agung. There he proclaimed himself the king of Bali, the Dewa Agung, the hereditary title of the Raja of Klungkung. The Dewa Agung divided the island into Principalities which be gave to his relatives and generals to govern. By degrees these local chiefs grew independent of the Dewa Agung and became the Raja of the smaller kingdoms into which Bali was later divided.

It was of extreme significance for the cultural development of Bali that in the exodus of the rulers, the priests, and the intellectuals of what was the most civilized race of the Eastern islands, the cream of Javanese culture was transplanted as a unit into Bali. There the art, the religion and philosophy of the Hindu Javanese were preserved and- have flourished practically undisturbed until today. When the fury of intolerant Islamism drove the intellectuals of Java into Bali, they brought with them their classics and continued to cultivate their poetry and art, so that when Sir Stamford Raffles wanted to write the history of Java, be had to turn to Bali for what remains of the once great literature of Java.

The Dutch

     The Balinese princes prospered and 'soon started out for new colonies, extending their influence to the East and conquering he neighboring islands of Lombok and Sumbawa. In 1510 the Portuguese adventurer Alphonso de Albuquerque discovered Sumatra and made voyages to the " Spice Islands " to procure valuable cargoes of pepper, cloves, and nutmeg, all the while fighting pirates, hostile Malays, and Javanese. In 1597 2 fleet of Dutch ships, headed by a former employee of the Portuguese, Cornelius Houtman, discovered Bali. He and his men fell in love with the island and made excellent friends with the kin a!9 good-natured fat man who had two hundred wives, rode in a. chariot drawn by two white buffaloes which he drove himself and owned fifty dwarfs whose bodies bad been distorted into resemblance of kris handles. After a long Sojourn in the island, some of the Dutch returned to Holland to report the discovery of the new " paradise ". others refused to leave Bali. The news created such a sensation in Holland that in 1601 the trader Herm skerk was sent to Bali with presents of all sorts for the king, who in turn presented him with a beautiful Balinese lady.

The relations between the Indies and Europe later were darkened by the appearance of the Dutch East India Company, an organization of merchants and traders whose goal was the unlimited exploitation of the islands. They promoted wars, seized lands, established monopolies of opium (if a native was caught selling opium he was put to death) . and collected revenues from the natives that were even greater than those exacted by the local princes. The traders used every possible means to gain the favors of the Raja in order to control Bali, bringing gifts to them of Persian horses, gilt chairs, red cloth, wines, brass candelabra, and so forth. Not meeting with much success, they resorted to political intrigue, selling arms to the enemies of the Balinese while Offering assistance against those they had armed, in exchange for concessions.

Meantime the Balinese had completed the conquest of Lombok (1740). There the Dutch tried to influence the Balinese governors to become independent of Bali and join the " Honorable East India Company." After two centuries of ruthless operation the company, already bankrupt and decayed, attracted such unfavorable criticism that the Dutch Government was forced to assume control, and in 1798 the Dutch East India Company went into inglorious collapse.

In the following years trouble started for the Balinese; the sultan of Surakarta, in Java, ceded to the Dutch " rights " he did not have over Bali, but they took no steps to claim them. The Balinese princes recognized Dutch supremacy, but retained their local autonomy. In x 846 the question of the ancient right of the Balinese to confiscate the cargo of wrecked ships brought the first Dutch military expedition against North Bali, which, after a series of battles, ended in Dutch control over the northern states of Buleleng and Jembrana in 1882. The Balinese princes were made to sign a treaty in which piracy, slavery, and the exercise of shore rights were forbidden and in which they promised not to permit the establishment of any other European power in Bali.

In 1885 there was a rebellion of Sasaks, the vassals of the Balinese in Lombok, while in Bali internal wars broke out among the various Raja. Sasaks were brought to Bali and forced to fight During these wars the united states of Badung and Klungkung annexed Mengwi and they all turned against the troublesome Raja of Gianyar. The Sasak chiefs complained to the Dutch, asking to be freed from the tyranny of the Balinese princes. The Dutch were becoming alarmed at the friendly advances of the Balinese towards the English, and officials were sent to negotiate a peace. They were unsuccessful and even apologies demanded for insults to the envoys were refused.

The Lombok War

    In 1894 the Dutch landed an elaborate military expedition in Lombok and sent an ultimatum to the Lombok Radia, who was under the influence of Gusti Gede Djilantik, Radja of Karangasem, a friend of the Dutch. The terms of the ultimatum were accepted and the Radja agreed to pay a " war indemnity " of one million guilders. Conferences were held between the Balinese and the Sasaks, and everybody seemed satisfied. The army remained in the capital for a few weeks giving military demonstrations while waiting for the payment of the indemnity. Soon there were rumors of dissension between the old Radja and the princes, and the Balinese began to appear less friendly; the camps
were no longer visited by the princes, and one day the women did not even come to market. This was the signal for the Dutch to prepare for the defence.

That night they were attacked by fierce rifle-fire through holes made in the thick walls of the palaces and houses around the Dutch encampments. Orchestras played continuously and all night the great alarm-drums were beaten. The Dutch returned the fire as well as they could in the darkness, trying to demolish the stone walls of the palace, but without much success. Captain W. Cool, an eyewitness, relates: " The noise was deafening and bullets were falling fast around us. . . . Added to all this was the ear-splitting sound of the tomtoms and the war cries of the Balinese as an accompaniment to the hammering and boring of the walls." Every bivouac was besieged by an invisible foe. On the dawn of the third day the army retreated towards the sea, leaving nearly one hundred dead and three hundred wounded. Among the dead was General Van Ham, second in command. A regiment was taken prisoner and was marched along the lines of Balinese soldiers; Captain Cool tells us that " they were all armed, yet they maintained a respectful attitude. Not an offensive word was said or a threatening hand raised." The starving prisoners were fed with white rice and drinks of orange and coconut water. The wounded were provided with fresh bandages. After a sojourn in the palace they were released with a letter from the Crown Prince stating that he was releasing the prisoners as a gesture of friendship and as proof that he wished to end hostilities. But the letter was ignored by the commander-inchief, and at the seashore the decimated army erected new fortifications protected by the warships at anchor.

When the news of the defeat reached Java and Holland, the press flared up with indignation against " the sinister treachery of the Balinese. Immediately large reinforcements of men and heavy artillery were sent from Java. New fortifications were built and the Sasaks were forced to fight against the Balinese. The offensive was started against the capital, the army advancing cautiously, bombarding the villages along the way, and burning them to the ground after the Sasaks had looted them. Mataram and Cakra Negara, the two residences of the princes, were shelled and the Dutch succeeded in blowing up their arsenals and rice stores. The city of Mataram was captured first. Men and women, caught unawares, stabbed themselves rather than fall into the bands of the soldiers. Once occupied, Mataram was ordered razed to the ground. Every wall was laid low and all the trees chopped down. The work of destruction took over a month. Next came the attack on Cakra Negara, the last important city of the Balinese in Lombok. They defended it tenaciously, but could not long resist the effects of artillery, and every palace and house that showed resistance was soon in flames. The Crown Prince, Anak Agung Ketut, the greatest enemy of the Dutch, was killed. The city was taken, the old Radja captured and exiled to Batavia, where he soon died of a broken heart. Thus ended Balinese rule in Lombok. The new conquest cost the Dutch 214 dead and 476 wounded, besides 746 who died of sickness and fatigue.

CONQUEST OF SOUTH BALI

In Bali, things continued in a state of turmoil. The allied states of Badung, Klungkung, and Bangli united to make war on Gianyar. In 1900 the powerful prince of Ubud, Tjokorde Gede, influenced the Dewa Manggis, Radja of,Gianyar, to ask for help from the Dutch Government. An army was sent immediately to protect Gianyar, which was automatically annexed by the Dutch.

In May of 1904 the small Chinese steamer Sri Koemala, coming from Borneo, was wrecked and looted in Sanur, on the south coast of Bali. The owners held the Dutch Government responsible and demanded three thousand silver dollars' damages and
the punishment of those culpable. Official embassies were Sent to obtain the amount from the Radja of Badung, Anak Agung Made, who refused. The dickering went on for two years, but finally the Dutch, angered because the prince could not be made
to pay, ordered the closing of Badung to all exports and imports and asked the co-operation of the bordering states. All of the independent princes refused to close their frontiers. That was the beginning of the struggle for supremacy between the Dutch and
the Balinese Radjas. The people themselves were, for the most part, indifferent. To them the victory of one side or the other meant chiefly a change of masters, somebody else to whom to pay taxes.

In the fall of 1906 the Radja definitely refused to meet the demands and on the 15th of September a large military expedition landed in Sanur, only three miles from Den Pasar, the capital of Badung. Here the people remained indifferent to the presence of the soldiers, because, being under the influence of the peace loving Brahmanas, they were unconcerned with the troubles of the Raja. But at dawn of the following day an army of Balinese with golden spears, coming from Denpasar, made a surprise attack. The fighting went on all day; a few Dutch soldiers were wounded, but hundreds of Balinese were killed in the unequal fight, and by evening the Balinese were forced to retreat. The Dutch remained in Sanur for a few days, occasionally giving concerts for the Balinese, ironically playing the Sourire d'amour. on their brass band. When the advance on Denpasar was started, the army was opposed all the way, but when they came to the palace of Kesiman, just outside the town, they found it deserted. There the acting ruler had been killed by a priest in an argument over whether they should oppose the Dutch. It is curious that inside the palace they found two bronze cannon that had belonged to Napoleon, bearing the date 1813 and the Napoleonic "N," together with a number of muskets from 1620.

Early on the morning of September 20 the navy bombarded Denpasar, shells falling on the palace and the houses of other princes, setting them on fire. This caused the civilian population to flee, leaving the Radja with only about two thousand men. Soon after the bombardment the army was reported near Denpasar; the Radja expected that the attack would be directed against the main entrance of the palace on the south side, as their military law would require, but unexpectedly the army turned and made for the north. Inside, the household bad been worked up to a state of frenzy, almost a trance; everything of value was destroyed and the palace was set on fire. The king, seeing his cause lost, told his followers that to defend the palace was hopeless, but anyone who wished could folldw him into a puputan, a " fight to the end." The only honorable thing left for him was to die a dignified death, rather than be exiled like the Radja of Lombok, to die away from Bali, and without the proper rituals of cremation. In a moment the Radia, his Pungawas, his generals. and all his relatives, men and women, were ready, dressed in their best and wearing their finest gold krisses. The women were even more enthusiastic than the men; they were dressed in men's clothes, short white loincloths caught between the legs, covered with jewellery, and with their hair loose. They carried krisses and spears broken in half to be used more effectively at close range. At nine in the morning the fantastic procession left the palace, with the Radja at the head, carried on the shoulders of one of his men, protected by his gold umbrellas of state, staring intently at the road in front of him, and clutching in his right hand his kris of gold and diamonds. He was followed by silent men and entranced women, and even boys joined the procession, armed with spears and krisses. They marched on through what is today the main avenue of Den Pasar towards Kesiman, and when they turned the comer, the Dutch regiment was only three hundred yards away. The commander, astonished at the sight of the strange procession, gave orders to halt; Balinese interpreters from Buleleng spoke to the Radja and his followers, begging them anxiously to stop, but they only walked faster. They came within one hundred feet, then seventy feet, then made a mad rush at the soldiers, waving their krisses and spears. The soldiers fired the first volley and a few fell, the Radja among them. Frenzied men and women continued to attack, and the soldiers, to avoid being killed, were obliged to fire continually. Someone went among the fallen people with a kris killing the wounded. He was shot down, but immediately another man took his place; he was shot, but an old woman took the kriss and continued the bloody task. The wives of the Radja stabbed themselves over his body, which lay buried under the corpses of the princes and princesses who had dragged them selves over to die upon the body of their king. When the horrified soldiers stopped firing, the women threw handfuls of gold coins, yelling that it was payment for killing them; and if the liberating bullet did not come soon enough, the maddened women stabbed themselves. When they had nearly all been killed, a new group approached, led by the Radja's brother, a twelve-year-old boy who could hardly carry his spear. The interpreters again tried to stop them, but were ignored, and they were all shot down.

The way to the burning palace was now free, except for the hundreds of corpses that covered the road. Everywhere lay broken spears and krisses with gold handles studded with enormous diamonds and rubies in pools of blood. On the side of the Dutch there was only one man killed, a, sergeant stabbed by a woman.

In the afternoon of the same day the army attacked the palace of the neighboring Radja of Pemecutan, but the Balinese met them with artillery fire that caused some losses among the Dutch. Near the palace another puputan took place: the insane old Radia, dressed in yellow silks and carried in a gold sedan chair, followed by his wives and Pungawas, went out to meet the army after setting the palace on fire. Soon all were killed. When the palace was taken, the last obstacle to the conquest of Badung, the tired soldiers returned to Denpasar, but their victory tasted of a terrible moral defeat.

The people returned to their houses. All night long, hurried wholesale cremations were held while the Dutch buried their dead. The next morning a young Pungawa came to see the commander. He said he had been away the day before and had missed being killed with the rest, so be asked to be shot by the soldiers. When he was refused, be drew his kris and stabbed himself before he could be prevented. The Balinese then gave up their arms.

A few days later Gusti Ngurah Agung, the Radja of Tabanan, came with his son to speak to the Resident. He had changed his gold umbrella for a green one in sign of submission. He wanted to surrender on condition that he be allowed to retain his title and have the same rights as the Radja of Gianyar and Karangasem; Resident Liefrink replied coldly that he must be deported from Bali until an answer to his request came from the Government He would be held in the palace for the night and on the next day would embark for Lombok. Next morning both the Radja and his son were found dead; the son was poisoned, supposedly, by an overdose of opium, and the old Radja had cut his throat with a blunt sirih knife. Thus the state of Tabanan fell to the, Dutch.

Two years later the Dewa Agung of Klungkung remained the, only independent Radja, but be was " insolent," and the stori of Lombok, Denpasar, and Pemetjutan were repeated; an armed force was sent to punish him and another great puputan t place in the main avenue of Klungkung; the highest Radja Bali was killed, with his whole family.

Two of the women who survived the Denpasar puputan sisters of the Radja, were aunts of Gusti Oka, the young prince in whose house we lived. They are now white-haired old ladies but they remember every detail of the struggle and one s 0 me two bullet wounds in her side. Gusti was only two years at the time and he was rushed to another village with his litle cousin, the present Regent of Badung, but Gusti's father killed and his house destroyed. Another relative of the Raja who survived the massacre told us she fainted when she was cut in the face by the spear of a falling man. All she remembers was " the cool hissing of the bullets " in her ears; she added:" like music. "

The army remained in Bali until 1914, when it was considered that Balinese resistance was sufficiently controlled, and the army was replaced by a police force. The Dutch then reorganized the Government of the island along the lines it had under the Radjas; those who bad been favorable to the Dutch, their allies in Gianyar and Karangasem, were allowed to retain their autocratic rights over the people of their districts and were given certain supremacy over other ruling princes, mostly the descendants of the former Radjas. They were made puppet regents, responsible to the Government for the behaviour of their subjects and for the payment of taxes, which they collect through relatives whom they appoint as chiefs, pungawa, of the districts under their control. Each regent is, however, supervised by a Dutch Controller, who is supposed to act as his " elder brother " and whose orders are called recommendations.

    NOTE ON MAYA DANAWA

JANE BELO in "A Study of Customs Pertaining to Twins in Bali" quotes the legend of Maya Danawa and the origin of Dalem Bedaulu from the Balinese manuscript Usana Bali:

It was long ago, in the time when the great mountain, the Gunung Agung, had just been made, A fierce and terrible Detya, Maya Danawa, was in power over the land. He was jealous of the gods and did not allow the people to give them offerings. The gods banded together to fight the demon and a war ensued in which many people were killed.

" Finally Batara Indra was able to overpower Maya Danawa, but in killing him his plan was to make him alive again, dividing him into a male and female part, to become the first Radia of Bali. Ile spirit of the demon was placed in a coconut flower, and on the slopes of the Gunung Agung the gods came and blessed it, and out of the coconut flower they made to come two children, a boy and a girl, who were called Mesula - Mesuli."

The boy and girl twins married and had children, also twins, who continued to rule in Pedjeng. These twins also married and had more twins, until a seventh generation of twin Mesula-Mesuli. The last male of these twins rejected his black and ugly sister in marriage for a girl dancer, thus breaking the line of royal twins. T'he last twin born was endowed with great magic powers; he could allow a retainer to cut his head off and replace it without harm to himself. But one day the head fell into a river and was lost, carried away in the rushing stream of a sudden bandjir. The,, retainer in desperation cut off the head of a pig and placed it on the shoulders of the king, who from then on had to live on a high tower and forbade his subjects to look up at him. He was seen, however, by a small child who passed unnoticed and who spread the news of the pig-head king, who became then known as Bedaulu, He-Who-Changed-Heads.

In the manuscript Catur Yoga we came across additional details of great war between the gods and Maya Danawa:

"The God were defeated by Maya Danawa and driven back to where a spring of Poisoned water had been created by the demon. The thirsty gods drank and died, all except Indra, who struck the ground a produced a spring of the elixir of immortality, amertha, with which be able to revive the gods." the local of this spring is supposed to be theholy spring of Tirta Empul near Tampaksiring. The gods attacked again Maya Danawa was wounded, and his blood flowed into the great river Petanu that runs near Blahbatu. Today the waters from this river not be used to irrigate rice fields because it is believed that rice water by it will, when cut, exude blood.