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Introduction
to Bali
History
Geography
Religion
& Belief
Society
& Community System
Custom/
Traditions
Caste
System
Agriculture Irrigation
System Art
History
According to Nagarakertagama, an
east Javanese chronicle, in the 4th century Bali was
conquered by the Hindu Javanese kingdom of Majapahit, infusing the
island with its elegant arts and court culture. When the empire
began to collapse in the 16th century, the Javanese priestly
aristocracy took refuse in Bali, fleeing the advance of Islam, and
Balinese Hinduism underwent a renewal under the inspiration of the
priest-poet Dhanghyang Nirartha, also known as Pedanda Sakti Wawu
Rauh (the newly arrived and powerful high priests).
Nirartha traveled all over Bali, teaching and establishing many
temples. One of the temples he built was known as Tanah Lot.
The Balinese, anthropologists
suggest, are an amalgamation of a number of people. The Chinese
coming from the North, the Indian and the Arabs from way West, and
other groups coming directly to Bali or by way of Java. They
become what is now known as native Balinese.
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Geography
Bali is an island about 5,600
square kilometers and one of 27 provinces of the Republic of
Indonesia. Although Indonesia comprises over three hundred ethnic
groups and over three thousand populated islands, Bali is the only
province that is also at once an island and at the same time an
ethnic group, and this gives the Balinese a heightened sense of
their distinctiveness as they try to find their identity as modern
Indonesians.
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Religion
and Belief
Balinese Hinduism is vibrant and
syncretic. At its most ancient core is animism, bound with threads
of tantric Buddhism and ancestor veneration that probably
originated in southern China. Though originating from India, the
brand of Hinduism known and practiced in Bali differs
significantly from the one found in India. Instead of mysticism or
philosophy, the emphasis of Bali's Hinduism is more in rituals and
dramatic features, allowing the religion and its practice to be
incorporated into daily life of Balinese peasants. These rituals
and dramatic features have been intricately woven into the lives
of Balinese to the extent that one cannot separate the religious
life of Bali from its daily life. These rituals most often take
place in a temple, the most important structure in the Balinese
culture.
The Balinese sum up their view of
life in three fundamental relationships (also known as Tri Hita
Karana): to the spiritual world, to the world of human beings and
to the natural world around them. They also believe that these
worlds interpenetrated each other, and that it is the
responsibility of human being to make sure that this interaction
is balanced and harmonious. The Balinese accomplish this through
ritual, expressed in the form of religious offerings. The Balinese
classify their ritual in five sorts (Panca Yadnya): those for
gods, for the spirit of dead body, for the initiation of priests,
for the rites passage in the growth of human beings, and for the
demons.
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Society/Community
System
Bali is society of hamlets
clustered around temples. In Bali as a culture organism, the
villages are its vital organs, and the network of temples its
nervous system. The Balinese have a highly detailed religious
culture that an order influence and integrates almost every aspect
of their life from birth to death, including such aspects as
agriculture and economic system.
Although individual mystic
practices exist in Bali, religious devotion is generally a
communal affair, and this is the basis of the great cohesiveness
of Balinese village life. Every Balinese village has several
temples to which all the villagers belong, and in a certain sense
a village can be defined as the congregation of a group of
temples. Because of this communal responsibility for the care of
the gods, a village must maintain its spiritual purity.
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Customs and
Traditions
- Names:
Basically the Balinese
only have four first names. The first child is Wayan or Putu, the
second child is Made or Kadek, the third is Nyoman or Komang and
the fourth is Ketut. The fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth
will be another Wayan, Made, Nyoman, Ketut and Wayan again.
- Childhood:
The Balinese certainly
love children and they have plenty of them to prove it. Coping
with a large family is made much easier by the policy of putting
younger children in the care of older ones.
- Marriage:
Every Balinese expects to
marry and raise a family, and marriage takes places at a
comparatively young age. Marriages are not, in general, arranged
as they are in many other Asian communities although strict rules
apply to marriages between the castes. There are two basic forms
of marriage in Bali – mapadik and ngorod. The respectable form,
in which the family of the man visit the family of the woman and
politely propose that the marriage take place, is mapadik. The
Balinese, however, like their fun and often prefer marriage by
elopement (ngorod) as the most exciting option. Of course, the
Balinese are also a practical people so nobody is too surprised
when the young man spirits away his bride-to-be, even if she
loudly protests about being kidnapped. The couple goes into hiding
and somehow the girl’s parents, no matter how assiduously they
search, never manage to find her. Eventually the couple
re-emerges, announce that it is too late to stop them now, the
marriage is officially recognized and everybody has had a lot of
fun and games. Marriage by elopement has another advantage apart
from being exciting and mildly heroic-it’s cheaper.
- Men & Women:
There are certain tasks
clearly to be handled by women, and others reserved for men.
Social life in Bali is relatively free and easy. In Balinese
leisure activities the roles are also sex differentiated. Both men
and women dance but only men play the gamelan.
- Death & Cremation:
There are ceremonies for
every stage of Balinese life but often the last
ceremony-cremation-is the biggest. A Balinese cremation can be an
amazing, spectacular, colorful, noisy and exciting event. In fact
it often takes so long to organize a cremation that years have
passed since the death. During that time the body is temporarily
buried. Of course an auspicious day must be chosen for the
cremation and since a big cremation can be very expensive business
many less wealthy people may take the opportunity of joining in at
a larger cremation and sending their own dead on their way at the
same time.
- Festivals:
Festival as an important
feature of the Balinese life occurs on fixed dates according to
the Balinese Calendar. There are annual cycle and every six months
celebrations of holidays, life-cycle ceremonies of a Balinese
person since the time inside the mother's womb followed in stages
up until marriage and the most important of the Balinese ritual is
that includes funeral rites and cremation. To maintain and
preserve every aspect of the Balinese's cultural life, annual
festivals have been held by the Provincial Government, such as :
the Annual Art Festival. This festival usually takes place in
every Saturday middle of June to Saturday middle of July with
exhibitions and performances of various kind of artworks and
cultural achievements.
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Caste System
Balinese society is founded on
the Hindu caste system, although in a somewhat simpler form than
that practiced in India. In Bali, there are four castes; Sundras,
the peasants who comprise over 90% of the population, Wesias, the
warrior caste, which also includes traders and some nobility,
Satrias, the caste of kings, and Pedanas, the holy men and priests
(brahman).The caste of a person is indicated by their title; Ida
Bagus for Brahman, Anak Agung or Dewa for Satrias, and I Gusti for
Wesias.
Each caste has its own language,
and a separate dialect exists to enable someone to address one of
unknown caste to avoid disrespect. The national language of
Indonesia, which is taught in schools simplifies communication
somewhat, although at the expense of cultural diversity.
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Agriculture
System
Nature has endowed Bali with
ideal conditions for the development of agriculture. The divine
volcanoes, still frequently active, provide the soils with great
fertility. Rainfall and numerous mountain springs supply many
areas of the island with ample water year-round. And a long dry
season brings plentiful sunshine for many months of the year. Bali
is, as a result, one of the most productive traditional
agricultural areas on earth, which has in turn made possible the
development of a highly intricate civilization on the island since
very early times.
Wet-rice cultivation is the key
to this agricultural bounty. In well-watered areas where wet-rice
culture predominates, rice is planted in rotation with so-called
palawija cash crops such as soybeans, peanuts, onions, chili
peppers and other vegetables. In the drier region corn, taro,
tapioca and beets are cultivated.
Rice is, and has always been, the
staff of life for Balinese. Personified as the "divine
nutrition" in the form by the form of the goddess Bhatari
Sri, rice is seen by the Balinese to be part of an all-compassing
life force of which humans partake and an important social force.
The phases of rice cultivation determine the seasonal rhythm of
work as well as the division of labor between men and women within
the community. Balinese respect for their native rice varieties in
expressed in countless myths and in colorful rituals in which the
life cycle of the female rice divinity ore portrayed-from the
planting of the seed to the harvesting of grain. Rice thus
represent "culture" to the Balinese in the dual
sense of culture and cultus-cultivation and worship.
The rituals of the cycle of
planting, maintaining, irrigating, and harvesting rice enrich the
cultural life of Bali beyond a single staple can ever hope to do.
At the beginning of planting time, after the water buffallos walk
the rice fields several times to prepare them, ceremonies are held
to carry the young stems of rice that have been nurtured in a
special nursery. On each section of the rice fields, the corner
nearest to Gunung Agung will receive the honor to be the first
place to receive the young stems of rice. The water level in each
section is perfect; little streams of water effortlessly flow from
the highest section up on top of the hill to the very bottom
section. The planning and responsibility of the irrigation and
planting schedule are arranged through subak, a Balinese system
that ties together rice cultivation with its water temple system.
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Irrigation
Cooperatives System (Subak)
Historical evidence indicates
that since the 11th century, all peasants whose fields were fed by
the same watercourse have belonged to a single subak or irrigation
cooperative. This is a traditional institution, which regulates
the construction and maintenance of waterworks, and distribution
of life-giving water that they supply. Such regulation is
essential to efficient wet-rice cultivation on Bali, where water
travels through very deep ravines and across countless terraces in
its journey from mountains to the sea.
The head of the subak is chosen
in a consensus system by the peasant. Regularly the elected
representatives from all subak cooperatives in one region meet to
decide, with the help of priests, the distribution of the water
flows and irrigates all the fields in this parts of Bali. They
oversee the maintenance of dams and weirs that divide the water,
select the types of seed to plant and fertilizer to use and
resolve conflicts that arise among neighbors.
Perhaps the most important of all
is the determination of when to plant and when to harvest, a
decision controlled by 1,000-year-old religious traditions. Some
year’s back, farmers followed a government decree and everyone
planted at the same time: fields at the tops of the mountains had
too much water, those below not enough; plagues of locusts and
mice ate what little rice did grow. Disgruntled with the poor
harvest brought about by scientists and bureaucrats, farmers
returned to their religion for guidance.
Head of Subak had to follow the
tradition and also enrich himself by studying all the latest
information on fertilizers, insecticides and seeds. The success of
his subak is rooted in following the proper religious ceremonies.
But, with the increased number of harvest each year (two and
sometimes three), the farmers have not changed the way they
worship the gods of planting and harvest, just the frequency.
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Art
The very soul of Bali is rooted
in religion and is expressed in art forms that have been
passionately preserved over the centuries. It seems that almost
every person is an artist, spending free time applying skills and
images which have been passed down from generation to generation
and grasped from a very young age.
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