|
never had a glimpse of Bali". He spoke of his having missed the sight of
it as if he had toiled for twenty years in vain. To visit Bali before
retiring is the ambition of every Hollander in the Indies. My friend on
the steamer had a family of four little children with him. "I couldn't
drag those along, you know", he explained, with a look at the
encumbrance that seemed an odd mixture of affection and regret. I had to
agree with him there. For Bali is not a land of comfortable hotels where
mothers find space and attendance enough not to feel embarrassed on
account of the large family they bring with them. There are not any
hotels at all, and I hope that the day will never dawn that sees the
opening of a Balinese Commodore. For that day would be the end of Bali's
primitive charm, Those who seek the island must seek it for its own
enchanting beauty, not for the pleasures of commodious hotel life to
which the exotic scenery supplies an attractive background. They must be
satisfied with simple accommodation in the Government pasangrahans.
These are hostelries for the reception of Dutch officials and native
regents who are on a circuit though the district under their rule. There
is a front porch and a back porch connected by an oblong room which the
Dutch call Binnengalerij, or inner porch. On either side of this inner
porch are the guest rooms. The man in charge is a native, the man- door,
who welcomes you with ceremonious politeness. He may only admit you
inner orch. h after the controller of the District has sent him word.
necessary to notify the controleur of your servants room. ` coming and
obtain his consent for the use 1. of the pasangrahan. There is no need
to call on this official in person. The K. P.M. has a representative at
Booleleng, the har bor where one lands, who knows how to arrange one's
trip through the island. He will reserve accommodation for you by
telephone, he will order your automobile for there are neither trains
nor trolley cars in Bali - he will draw up an itinerary, and accompany
your party, if you wish, as a guide and interpreter. Ball might be
fittingly described as affording a picture of Java as it must have
looked like in pre-Islamic days, five centuries and more ago. The
Balinese are descendants of Javanese settlers, who in two mass
migrations, one in the ninth, the other in the early sixteenth century,
escaped from the political turmoil of their native land and peopled the
island across the strait. They brought their Hindu culture with them,
and whereas Java lost hers when she became Islamized, Bali was never
invaded by Islam, so that Brahmanism is still the ruling religion of the
Balinese, and Shiwa their highest god. There are Mohammedans among them,
but they are outcasts in the literal sense, casteless waifs in a society
that is built up on the caste system. A man without a caste is a man
without a country in Bali. He exists, but does not belong to his
habitat, he lives, but loose from all attachments that make life worth
living. The caste system was imported by the Hindus and superimposed
upon a native society which was democratic in spirit. That spirit is
still alive and able to assert itself in many ways. The laws that have
emanated from above, from the Hindu princes and the sacred books of
Brahmanism, measure the punishment by the offender's social status. The
higher the caste, the greater the clemency of the law. But in the
communal organizations which are of the people's own making -
spontaneous growths of their inborn sense of equity - no privileged
caste is recognized. The inhabitants of a desa, or village commune, are
bound together by strong ties, and the rights and duties of the
community are enshrined in written laws. In the older villages
membership in these desa societies is limited to heads of families whose
ancestors were founders of the desa, and one of the advantages attached
to this membership is the title to arable land. But caste has nothing to
do with their privileged position, which resembles that of the landed
gentry in mediaeval England. And in the villages of later date every
head of a family is entitled to membership, and few and trifling
advantages are attached to it. Besides these village societies the
Balinese have soobak societies, formed by the owners of rice fields that
are watered by the same irrigation system. Equality of rights and duties
in both these types of organizations is stretched to such an extent that
no caste has any privilege over another. As a member of a sakaha desa or
a sakaha soobak a Brahman is the equal of a Sudra, and a poonggawa or
district head has, as such, no greater authority than the lowest born
villager. These sakahas are democratic bodies of spontaneous growth,
which the Dutch government is careful to leave intact and to utilize. It
would be incorrect to say that the Balinese are conscious of the caste
system's alien origin. It is bound up with their religious beliefs, and
for them to assert that it had not existed from the beginning of time
would be tantamount to blasphemy. But unconsciously the communal spirit,
which is an inheritance of their pre-Hindu past, has softened the
rigidity of the system and divested it of many traits that make it
repulsive to westerners. The sudra, of the lowest caste, is in the eyes
of the true-born Hindu an impure being, but the Balinese do not regard
him in that light. Impure are only those who have contaminated
themselves by an impure act, and that stain may attach to the members of
any caste, the only difference being that the impure condition is sooner
cleansed in the case of a high-born man. Impurity caused by the touching
of a corpse lasts five days for a priest, ten for a Braman, fifteen for
a kshatriya, twenty for a wesya, and twenty-five for a sudra, five days
of unclean penance marking the difference between one caste and the
next. The time-honored relation between caste and profession is not
honored any more by the Balinese if it ever existed among: them The
padandas, or priests, it is true, all come from the Brahman caste, but
otherwise the accident of birth does not decide a man's vocation. All
castes take a share in the cultivation of the rice, which is the great
national industry of Ball and, as in ava, an intrinsic part of their
religious life. Woman has more to do than to say in this caste-regulated
community. She is not treated, however, as an inferior being useful only
as a breeder and a worker. Women of the Brahman caste may be come
priests, and the wife of a padanda must be initiated into his learning.
Knowledge is not considered a superfluous attainment for women; on the
contrary, the Balinese are fond of education, and a large majority of
the people, including the women, have mastered the three R's. But it
goes without saying that their duties are more numerous and their rights
are fewer than those of the men. A man may take a wife from a lower
caste, but a woman may not marry months old, on its first anniversary,
at the naming, at the piercing of the lobes of the ears, at the filing
of the teeth, at the first menstruation, at the wedding, at the
beginning of pregnancy, at the death and the cremation. To cremate their
dead is for the Balinese a religious duty, and since the ceremony is an
expensive affair, they have an inducement to thrift in the desire to
insure for themselves an honorable end on the funeral pile. In order to
reduce the cost, a dead man's body is often temporarily buried, until an
opportunity occurs to have it cremated with others who have followed him
into death. If the corpse has decayed during years of waiting, the dead
one is burnt in effigy, a human figure engraved on a lontar leaf or on a
piece of wood taking his place. Among the better classes the body is
embalmed, wrapped up in cloths, coffined, and preserved under costly
textiles upon a balé-bandoong, a simple structure best described as a
four-cornered band-stand. I saw such a temporary tomb within the palace
walls of the regent of Karangasem. The body was that of an aunt of his,
a sister of his predecessor. When the late ruler died, the Dutch
Government would not allow his son to succeed him, as it had good reason
to suspect him of disloyalty. He was banished and a nephew of the dead
regent, the present ruler, I Goosti Bagoos Dyilantik, was appointed in
his stead. This man had always been a favorite of his uncle, and was
fully trusted by the Government at Batavia. The exiled claimant, as the
nearest relative to his father's sister, must give his consent to the
cremation before the ceremony can be performed, and he naturally refuses
to give it since he is barred from being present at the feast. And so
the old lady has been lying there, for I don't know how long, waiting
for her nephew to change his mind and have pity upon her wandering
spirit. The interval between death and cremation is a trying time for
both the deceased and the survivors. For the spirit remains housed in
the body and, while waiting for its release, haunts the dead one's
relatives. Hence the cremation is an occasion for rejoicing, as it
brings release from fear to the living and release from the body to the
dead. When a day for the cremation has been fixed, the relatives build a
portable tower of bamboo and rattan, on which the corpse is to be
carried to the pile. This tower, called wadah, varies in height
according to the prominence of the candidate for cremation. I saw one
building at Tabanan, which was especially remarkable on ac- count of the
monster which was to decorate the front of the tower waggon, not unlike
the figure-head at the bow of a ship. It consisted of a huge grinning
mask made of rattan, to which a pair of lyre- shaped wings were
attached, whose framework was covered, like a patchwork quilt, with
gaudily colored bits of plush or wool. This monster is called Karang
Boma and is a son of Vishnu, against whom he rebelled. Why this Hindu
Lucifer should be chosen to escort the dead to their funeral pile was a
question that the tower builders at Tabanan could not answer. They were
not concerned about the why and the wherefore, they simply followed
tradition, convinced that what had always been done must be right. On
the day set for the cremation, the corpse in its winding sheets is
carried to the wadah, and on the way thither the procession is attacked
by a crowd of relatives and friends, who want to tear off a piece of the
cloth, that they may possess something worn by the deceased whereby his
good qualities may pass on to them. This scene, though a legitimate part
of the ceremony, often develops into a regular fight between the
carriers and the holders-up. Arrived at the tower, the corpse is placed
on the top storey, whereupon the high scaffolding is carried by a
shouting crowd to the place of cre- mation. There is no funeral pile in
the strict sense of the word, only a kind of platform made of earth and
sods upon which a wooden animal, a steer or a lion, is waiting to
receive the corpse. The body is lowered into its hollow belly, the lid
that forms its back covers it up, oil is poured over the monster, and
the weird coffin is ignited. The flames are stirred by the bystanders
with long bamboo sticks, while they screen themselves from the scorching
heat behind their payongs, When at last the wooden animal collapses and
the body has been turned to ashes, they poke among the remains for the
skull and hammer it to dust, so as to make sure that the spirit shall
escape to heaven. Not until it has gone thither can it come back to
earth and migrate into another being. The soul of an uncremated body
would join the unsubstantial host of spooks, ghosts, and spirits, which
is the fate of women who die pregnant and of those who die of leprosy
and small-pox. 7] A people to attached to its religion, so assured of
the efficacy of prayers and rituals, and so conscientious in their
performance, is not easily accessible to the teaching of another faith.
Christianity has never made headway in the island. Three missionaries
have been preaching in Bali, but had to give up their work as a hopeless
task. One convert was all that was accomplished, and this man, in a fit
of frenzy or remorse, assaulted and killed his converter, That was about
fifty years ago. At present the Dutch Government does not allow any
mission to enter this field. Both Protestants and Roman Catholics are
anxious to resume their activities among the Balinese, but so far the
Government has remained firm in refusing to admit them. That does not
mean that the people must remain without the blessings that the
missionaries bring with the gospel. Schools, medical aid, sanitation,
are among the many boons that Dutch rule has brought to the Balinese.
The shocking and repulsive things that early travelers described have
been stamped out, and the present policy is to preserve the good and the
beautiful that make Bali a precious relic of the past. A Dutch official
whom I met at Karanga sem called the Balinese "a people without a
future". "A future", when applied to a nation means to us Westerners, I
take it, extension of one's economic power. In that sense the Balinese
are, no doubt, a futureless race. For they are content to remain as they
are, and immune to the contagion of Western restlessness, which always
chases after something new. The ship on which I returned to Java left
the harbor of Booleleng about sunset. The island soon became part of the
falling darkness and lost to view where I stood on the deck. But when
the moon arose and cast a silvery sheen upon the water, the island
seemed to rise from its depth, a fairy garden afloat upon the glittering
sea. Even so the life of these people drifts along, careless of the
future because the present is too happy and serene to make them long for
change, and without regret for the past, since the past is the present
in the changeless tenor of their existence. I had come to the end of my
cruise through the Malay Archipelago, and returned on the SS. ,,Patria",
of the "Rotterdam Lloyd", to Europe and western civilization. The
comforts and the company on board made the voyage seem short, and when I
landed at Marseilles I wondered at Java's proximity to Europe. Several
of my fellow passengers hurried off to the Italian lakes and the Swiss
Alps, to recover there from the effects of a protracted residence in the
tropics. ,,Why did you go to Java?" one of them asked. ,,Aren't
Switzerland and Italy more beautiful?" I did not deny it. But the charm
of modern travel is in the search for contrasts, in the sight of scenes
that are different from those that are familiar. Otherness is the
traveler's aim, and the stronger the contrast, the greater his Zest.
Hence the present-day interest in the life of primitive races, and the
fascination of fiction such as Conrad's, that takes the reader to their
distant shores. He knew those isles and wrote with an artist's love of
Bali's "terraced fields, of the murmuring clearntis of sparkling water
that flow down the sides of great mountains, bringing life to the land
and joy to its tillers". And he also knew that, in spite of their
otherness, ,,there is a bond between us and that humanity so far away.
For their land - like ours lies under the inscrutable eyes of the Most
High. Their hearts like ours - must endure the load of the gifts from
Heaven: the curse of facts and the blessing of illusions; the bitterness
of our wisdom and the deceptive consolation of our folly". It is in that
perceptive mood that the traveler should visit the East Indies, keenly
interested in their otherness and yet aware of the common humanity that
binds East and West together. |
