WHAT IS BALI AND WHO ARE THE BALINESE?

‘Bali is neither the last nor a lost Paradise but the home of a peculiarly gifted people of mixed race, endowed with a great sense of humour and a great sense of style where their own creations are concerned, and with a suppleness of mind which has enabled them to take what they want from the alien civilisations that have been reaching them for centuries and to leave the rest.’

‘In spite of a few exceptions - (tin roofs, cheap cloth and a few missionaries) – they seem to have left the rest very successfully.’

Walter Spies and Beryl De Zoot, ‘Dance and Drama in Bali’, 1938.

Bali is one of the thousands of islands that make up the country of Indonesia, but what an island it is, surrounded largely by protective coral reefs and palm fringed, white sand beaches!

Between two other significant islands, Java (the main government island) and Lombok, Bali is almost insignificant in size being only 140 kilometres right to left (or east to west) and just a bit more than half of that from top to bottom (or north to south).

It is home to about 3 million people which is almost insignificant in the total of Indonesia's 210 million people (2004) which in itself is an enormous ten times the total  population of the whole of Australia. The visitor to Bali finds it hard to believe the sum of the populace when confronted with an island of such small dimensions, not realising that Indonesia is made up of over 13,500 such islands. The figure defies the comprehension of the mind. The population density of the island is about five times the average for the whole of Indonesia and the third most populous area, behind only eastern and central Java.

The western visitor would be forgiven for thinking Bali could be driven around in a day. You need to see the terrain, the roads and the traffic to understand why you should not plan your holiday around this concept although from the tourist south in a day you can go to any part of the island and return for a dip into the hotel pool before a late dinner.

A million visitors a year was, and will be again, the tourist target for Bali alone, these visitors coming from all over the world but mainly from Asian countries now, the proportion of American, European and Australasian tourists falling.

In shape, Bali has been described as a duck laying an egg. The feet are the Bukit peninsula below the tourist areas of Kuta, Jimbaran, Sanur and Nusa Dua. The head is in the western end, the beak looking up to Borneo, Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Thailand with the tail of course at the other end between Candi Dasa and Amed. The egg is the off-shore island of Nusa Penida. I prefer to ignore Nusa Penida (the duck egg) and think of Bali as the head of a sleepy dog with floppy ears and a drooping jowl, sniffing disdainfully at northern Java.
The terrain is dominated by a string of volcanic mountains that fill the gap between those of Java and those of Lombok. No-one should doubt that this is a seismically active area and the Christmas '04 deep-sea earthquake and the resulting tsunami that swept across the Indian ocean to Sri Lanka and India as well as devastating Indonesian coasts is but the latest of events that include volcanic eruptions on Bali itself, the last in 1963 when Agung erupted and thousands were killed. The mountains, however, are also the source of the water that has meant life from the earliest settlements in Bali. The mountains are revered today as the home of the gods by the Hindu Balinese and the water is their gift to the people, to be carefully managed in every little detail. It is the element that gives fruition to those all enveloping rice fields and incredible terraces that can be found in almost every corner of the island.

Tropical, being only 8 degrees south of the equator, Bali has two clearly recognisable seasons; wet, hot and humid around the end/beginning of the year and dry and warm for the rest of the year. There are other seasons if you listen to the Balinese farmers. They occur irregularly around the times of the change from wet to dry and dry to wet and may reflect the influences of the 'el Nino' and 'la Nina' that scientists have recently defined an weather influences. The temperatures in Bali are really fairly constant. Maximum to minimum variations through the day to night are about 10 degrees C in July and August, the driest months (50mm/month) to about 7 degrees in the wetter months of December, January and February when the monthly rainfall is about 250 to 350 millimetres. The humidity varies from 50% in the dry months to 70 % January to March. These are Denpasar measurements. As in most tropical countries when it rains everything gets really drenched but it's usually over in an hour or two - about 3 or 4 Bintangs. In the central mountains temperatures are about 10 degrees cooler and the rainfall quite a lot higher.

The life and culture of the Balinese (and to a lesser extent other Indonesians) is significantly coloured if not defined by the early traders and religious devotees arriving from India. (Hence Indonesia) The earliest animist beliefs were greatly modified but not totally eclipsed by the arrival of Hinduism from India. Today, native Indians barely recognise their faith in the Hinduism of Bali. The great stories of the Balinese are the great stories of the Indian sub-continent, The Ramayana and the Mahabharata, with little Balinese aberrations of course. Similarly the system of rule derives from the great Indian Empires. the Majapahit Empire flowering first in Java and then being driven out by the spread of Islam to settle first in Bali and then establishing a temporary a toe-hold in Lombok. The grandeur of this period in Bali's history can be seen with only a little use of imagination in the temples all over the island and particularly in the palaces around Ubud and in the river valleys just to the east in the district of Gianyar.

The Balinese are always building – (or re-building) – new temples, always using new motifs for the temples and statues; whatever comes to hand, whatever amuses them at the moment.’

‘Why may they not make new?’

‘But some Europeans dread lest anything so awful should happen to Bali and the Balinese that would modify what they (the Europeans) are pleased to call the Balinese tradition.

‘Yet the great and in-eradicable charm of the Balinese is that their traditions are at once so sure and yet so flexible.’

Walter Spies and Beryl De Zoot, ‘Dance and Drama in Bali’, 1938.

 THE EVOLUTION OF THE BALI PEOPLES is generally accepted to begin bit after 3,000 BC when peoples from present day China spread outwards and southwards across the land bridges that then joined country known today as Thailand/Cambodia/Vietnam, Sumatra, Malaysia and Borneo into the islands of Java, Bali and eventually Lombok, although this island may well have remained cut off by the deep and dangerous Lombok Strait separating the island from Bali. The system of rice cultivation is thought to have had its beginnings right from these earliest times. The influence of these Buddhist peoples remained for over 4,000 years (Compare 'modern' history's 2,000 years since the birth of Christ!) until the early 11th century when sea travellers and traders first, followed by priests and court emissaries, brought Hinduism and more local Javanese life styles, culture and religions into the flavour of the local establishments. Strangely to the order of things today perhaps, it was a Balinese prince, Airlanggha, who briefly united Bali and Java at this time. Within two centuries the Hindu/Javanese/Majapahit influence re-established only to fall to the less tolerant Islamic cultures.
The Dutch arrived as seafarers and traders in the next 100 years but it was not until relatively late, in the 18th century that they saw advantage in firmly establishing their presence as colonial masters. There followed a bloody period in Balinese history, a time when most of the old traditional royal ruling influence was stamped out. It might be argued that the Japanese who followed during Word War II were more benign overlords than the Dutch and also the ones who set the foundations, in their 'Greater Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere' ideal, for the uprisings under President Sukarno that finally ended Dutch ambitions of a post-war return to thinly disguised colonialism and led to independence in 1949.

THE BALINESE PEOPLES OF TODAY are generally deeply religious, devoted to family in a wide sense, responsible, oriented to neighbours and neighbourhood, quiet perhaps even serious until there is a joke to be told or enacted, sociable, warm, friendly, tolerant and open to outsiders and law abiding. It does not take great events, however, to bring to the surface those deeper convictions that led to mass suicides in front of superior arms and to murderous events that saw brother pitched against brother following independence and the anti-communist sentiments that followed an attempted coup in 1965. Even today, a village thief or a persistent offender against traditional village or family traditions laws might be found at the bottom of a steep and deep river valley, the victim of an unexplained tragedy, battered by the fall and somehow impaled on his own Kris, the wavy-bladed dagger revered in religious and royal ceremony and still worn in the waist sash of older Balinese for everyday use.
The man whom we get to drive us as often as possible when we are in Bali, Made Dera, epitomizes these traits. He is a member of his local 'banjar' or village council and attends to his duties at the temple and at ceremonies from funerals and cremations to children's' 6 month ceremonies and family tooth-filings. He cares for his mother and brothers in his house. He works at two jobs that see him journey from Tuban to Denpasar at midnight every day, returning at 4 to get a couple of hours sleep before starting again at 6 in the family business. By 8 or 9 he is in the driver's seat of his boss' Kijang, transporting tourists to the far corners of his beloved island. He is a man who, between ourselves, we no longer refer to as 'our driver' but as 'our friend' in Bali. One of our many friends and one whom we hope thinks of us as his friends too.
There can be no separation of a Balinese person and their religion. It has been said that there are more temples and shrines in Bali than there are people. Probably this is not quite true even though every home will have a small temple, every village has at least three, every district one, every workplace, even the beaches, will have a place for offerings, each of the old regencies has a major temple, every workplace, even the beach, will have somewhere to make offerings and of course there is the Mother Temple at Besakih near the summit of sacred Mount Agung and you will find offerings at road intersections, in each rice field, on bridges and street corners. Only once have I ever been in Made's Kijang when there was not a fresh offering on the top of the instrument binnacle and that was rectified at the first market we passed. Before it was put in place there was a ritual to be performed, water sprinkled and incense lit. The tourist will not leave the airport without passing a dozen or more offerings if they know where to look. Every Balinese is obliged to spend time working for the village temple and to attend each anniversary of their village of origin temple. No visitor can really say they have been to Bali if they have not attended a temple ceremony where mountainous and multi coloured offerings are made.

Dance/drama and the arts of painting, carving in wood and stone, textile weaving and music pervade life on Bali. Every district will have a gamelan orchestra and many town and villages also. If you have an interest in these arts go to Ubud which is recognised as the focus for the arts in Bali.

See 'Balinese Art' in the left hand contents column of our HOME PAGE if you are interested.

Each month (in'04 at least) a small booklet entitled 'BALI - PLUS' is available free. Try to find a copy.

LANGUAGE is a daily event for the Balinese. Ancient Balinese is (was) either Sanskrit, the old language of India or Kawi, the old language of Java. 'Modern' Balinese is becoming less used and is spoken at three levels of the dialect, depending on the status (caste) of the person being addressed. If speaking to a high caste Balinese then high or 'alus' Balinese will be used. When that person replies they will use the language of their listener, low or 'kasar' for most of the population. Balinese however is being steadily displaced by Bahasa Indonesia, the language of Indonesia. This is a modern and fairly simple language, based on the common Malay tongues of the wider region. It is further strengthened by a determined political effort to align the spelling and pronunciation across all of the many islands and across neighbouring countries also. Bahasa Indonesia is a uniting force across a nation which is often locally unique.

Even this conglomeration of languages is not the end.

English is now taught in schools from age 12 and spoken by almost all Balinese as a result of the war and subsequent tourism of course and will be further spread and strengthened by the growth of Bill Gates infernal machines. Further, most of the Balinese working in tourist resorts will also speak Dutch, get by in German, understand Japanese, and at least recognise a smattering of French and Italian.

Some other links that might interest you are -

Balinese Art,

Balinese Religion,

Bali's Rices,

- and there are others to select from at our Home Pages.

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