Everything
else and law
Under the catch-all tag of 'customs and usages' (zeden en gebruiken)
we find assembled any cross-cultu rally striking aspect of Bali that
does not relate explicitly to 'caste,' 'religion,' 'agriculture and
industry,' or the formal 'administration of justice' (rechtspraak).
Zeden en gebruiken covers what ethnographers would later catalogue as
social organization, family and mariage, ritual and magic, the arts,
and, since this is Bali, a long entry on cremation. Included here are
several ethnological themes important throughout the colonial period.
First, two types of village organization (desa vereenigingen) are distinguished.
Membership in the old-style villages is limited to the families whose
ancestors originally established the desa. they are governed by a council
of elders with exclusive rights to houseland. Membership in the newer
type desa includes outsiders (vreemdelingen). Thus the 'bond is no longer
so heartfelt' (innig), and all heads of families are on the council
and have property rights. This theme of old kingroup desas versus newer
composite desas was elaborated and historicized in future work. Its
companion theme was the democratic operation of local councils for both
village-area affairs and irrigation-society control.
The equality in rights and duties in both categories of councils was
extended so far that there was no question of any privileges for one
or another caste or even for one or another quality of man.
As members of a desa or subak council, a Brahmana stands as equal to
a Sudra, a district leader (punggawa) stands as equal to the most lowly
villager.
This phrasing of the issue overlooks the fact that high castes tend
to eschew desa al fairs altogether; they have little practical interest
in the council, since they boast independent ancestral temples, and
their residential property is counted among lands alienated from localities
by rajas. Also, traditionally such lines were relatively independent
of irrigation societies, because royal and noble houses kept them supplied
with a rice staple. Nevertheless, this independence was most likely
never total, and the egalitarian provisions must certainly have limited
local influence of twice-borns.
The Encyclopedia's significant shift in emphasis to the local, commoner
level of political and social organization reflected the important qualifications
to earlier views of Balinese royalty that emerged from late nineteent
-century research. Subsequent colonial and post-war research confirmed
this fact. H. Geertz has recently summarized the particularities of
the typical traditional bonds between ordinary Balinese and their superiors:
Commoners were owned I,c, specific services by them were owned by the
various lesser lords as well as directly by the paramount prince in
each region, and they could be 'bestowed' on others as gifts or seized
from them as a result of military conquest . . . Some commoners paid
only taxes to a lord, some were obliged to contribute goods and services
for massive ceremonial festivals, while others worked for the lord as
retainers or sharecroppers. Each individual commoner typically had several
different lords 'owning' various services of various of their inhabitants.
However, the governing of the village community itself was not the prerogative
of the gentry, nor did the lords have much of importance to do with
the irrigation societies. They served only as courts of last appeal
for commoner disputes that could not be settled through their own councils.
The main functions of the lords and princes, from the point of view
of the village communities, were symbolic and ritualistic in that the
ceremonies that the lords held periodically directly involved all the
local population.
A major theme in Indonesian studies was woman's lot, one of the favored
areas, along with prohibiting gambling, for proving the benefits of
colonialism. Accordingly, the Encyclopedia proclaimed:
As one of the good results of the expansion of our involvement in things
Balinese must certainly be included the assuagement of the lot of women.
Dutch observers considered family bonds in Bali strong and noted the
clear sexual division of labor, with men laboring in the fields and
women performing the constant household chores. Part of woman's 'very
subordinate place' was thought to be most conspicuous in Balinese marriage
practices. The Enc ' 1,clopedia lists four types of marriage: ( 1 )
the father or guardian of the young man directs the proposal to the
nearest male relations of the girl (mepadik); (2) abduction with mutual
approval (merangkat); (3) violent abduction (malangandang) wherein the
girl submits; and (4) the father or guardian of the girl makes the proposal
to the elders of the youth (sentana).
Colonial officials showed concern for the individual female's will.
enforce traditional sanctions against violent abduction; the girl's
outrage, if riot always her family's, was to be sham only. The article
notes special sentana marriages in which a son-in-law becomes legal
heir; it documents customs concerning adultery and illegitimate offspring
and records interesting taboos involving 'spiritual kingship' (geestelike
verwantschap) which forbid marriage with a house priest's or a guru
daughter. But the general account of marriage restrictions mistakes
a generational kinship terminology for a prohibition oil near-kin marriage,
and it assumes that relatives called by the same terms used for immediate
family could not be spouses:
Marriage prohibition because of blood or affinal relations goes further
for a Balinese than for us, because for him all the relatives of the
same generation were placed under the same category. Thus, lie considered
the child of his brother as his child.
Here the Encyclopedia was in factual error; a terminological 'brother-sister'
are, under certain circumstances, preferred spouses. While in 1917 theories
of caste were simplified and falsely historicized, theories of marriage
were virtually lacking. The systematics of marriage remained invisible,
partly because terms for kinsmen were not distinguished from marriage
rules. Marriage was considered detrimental to those individuals, especially
women, married against their will. We should note that while prohibiting
a given marriage may oppress a particular woman's or, for that matter,
man's will, it can also articulate an important social or cultural scheme.
Colonial officials eventually enforced hypergamy among the upper ranks
of the society; but they never learned to appreciate the significant
play in cultural categories marriage necessarily entailed. They never
wondered what all the marriage rites and different options and taboos
might rneari, what sort of social drama they might sustain.
Previous Next
More
Pages