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Most of what we know about Bali's
traditional kingdoms comes from the Balinese
themselves. Scores of masked dance dramas,
family chronicles and temple rituals focus
on great figures and events of the Balinese
past. In such accounts, the broad outline of
Bali's history from the 12th up to the 18th
centuries is an epic tale of the coming of
great men to power. These were the royal and
priestly founders of glorious dynasties -
some mad, some fearsome, some lazy and some
proud - who together with their retainers
and family members determined the fate of
Bali's kingdoms, as well as shaping the
situation and status of the island's
present-day inhabitants.
It is possible to see the Balinese as both
indifferent to history and yet utterly
obsessed by it. Indifferent because they are
not very interested in the "what happened
and why" that make up what we know as
history, while at the same time they are
obsessed by stories concerning their own
illustrious ancestors.
Balinese "history" is in fact a set of
stories that explain how their extended
families came to be where they are. Such
stories may explain, for example, how
certain ancestors moved from an ancient
court center to a remote village, or how
they were originally of aristocratic stock
although their descendants no longer possess
princely titles. In short, they provide
evidence of a continuing connection between
the world of the ancestors and present-day
Bali.
Each family possesses its own genealogy that
somehow fits into the overall picture. Some
focus on kings, their followers or priests
as key ancestors. Others see the family
history in terms of village leaders,
blacksmiths (powerful as makers of weapons
and tools) or villagers who resisted and
escaped the advance of new rulers.
The fact that such stories sometimes agree
with one another should not necessarily be
taken as proof that this is what really
happened. There are many gaps, loose ends
and inconsistencies - often pointing to the
fact that generations of priests, princes
and scribes have recast these tales about
the past to serve their own ends. 'Me
stories must be retold, nevertheless, in
order to know what is open to dispute.
The story begins in ancient Java, in the
legendary kingdoms of Kadiri and Majapahit
where Javanese culture is regarded (by
Javanese, Balinese and Western scholars
alike) as having reached its apex. From
these rich sources flowed the great
literature, art and court rituals of Hindu
Java, that were later transplanted to Bali.
One of the prime reasons for holding such
rituals was to elevate Hindu-Javanese
leaders to the status of god-like kings who
were in contact with the divine forces of
the cosmos. As these Javanese kingdoms
expanded to take over Bali, they brought
with them their art, literature and
cosmology. At the same time, the Javanese
also absorbed vital elements of Balinese
culture, eventually spreading some of these
throughout the archipelago and elsewhere in
Southeast Asia.
The great Airlangga, descendant of Bali's
illustrious King Udayana, is said to have
ascended the east Javanese throne and to
have founded the powerful kingdom of Kadiri
in the 11th century. Thus it was proper that
his descendants would later install priests
and warriors from Java to rule over Bali.
Foremost among these was the son of a
priest, Kresna Kapakisan, who became the
first king of Gelgel (now in Klungkung
Regency) in the mid-15th century.
The transition to Gelgel from a previous
court center at Samprangan (now in Gianyar
Regency) was made by a cockfighting member
of the Kapakisan dynasty, who became
embroiled in a struggle for the throne and
attempts to save the kingdom from the
mismanagement of his elder brother, or so
the account goes. There is little reason to
doubt this version of events, yet there are
huge gaps in the story of how power moved
from Java to Gelgel in previous centuries,
and the relation of the Kapakisan line to
earlier kings appointed by the Javanese
conquerors.
Most Balinese trace their ancestry back to a
group of courtiers clustering about the
great King Baturenggong, a descendant of
Kapakisan, who is seen to have presided over
a Balinese "Golden Age" in the 16th century.
Balinese accounts describe him as: "A king
of great authority, a true lion of a man,
who was wise in protecting his subjects and
attending to their needs, and an outstanding
warrior of great mystical power, always
victorious in war." European records do not
mention him by name, but attest to the
wealth and influence of a Balinese kingdom
which at this time had a more centralized
and unified system of government than was
the case in subsequent centuries.
Of equal if not greater importance in the
collective Balinese memory of this era is
the super-priest Nirartha. He is remembered
for his great spiritual powers - a man who
could stop floods, control the energies of
sexuality through meditation, and write
beautiful poetry to move men's' souls. In
the genealogies it was he who founded the
main line of Balinese high priests - those
whose worship is directed to Siwa, Lord of
the Gods. His name is associated with many
of Bali's greatest temples, and a corpus of
literature produced by himself and his
followers.
In Balinese eyes, the descendants of King
Baturenggong and Nirartha presided over a
period of decline, even though
Baturenggong's son, Seganing, upheld some of
his father's greatness and, after the texts,
fathered the ancestors of Bali's key royal
lines. Balinese sources tell of the
destruction of Gelgel by a rebellious chief
minister, Gusti Agung Maruti, who was
distinguished by possessing a tail and an
over weaning thirst for power. After his
defeat by princes who established themselves
in the north and south of the island, new
independent kingdoms arose from the ashes of
Gelgel. The Gelgel dynasty itself survived,
albeit in a much reduced state, as the
kingdom of Klungkung - maintaining some of
its moral and symbolic authority over the
rest of the island, but having direct
control of only its immediate area.
To the outside world, as to later Balinese
writers, the period following Gelgel's
Golden Age was one of chaos - in which
fractious kings ruled from courts scattered
about the island. This was not necessarily
so in contemporary Balinese terms, where the
new states must have represented a more
dynamic way of conducting the affairs of
state and external trade. Bali became famous
on the international scene at this time as a
source of slaves, savage fighters, beautiful
women and skilled craftsmen.
According to traditional accounts, the fate
and status of present-day Balinese families
was also largely determined at this time.
Kingdoms rose and fell with alarming
rapidity, clans split and were demoted or
even enslaved, aspiring princes waged war
and organized lavish ceremonies. Such human
dramas were punctuated by a series of
natural disasters, such as earthquakes,
epidemics and volcanic eruptions.
Bali's principal export throughout the 17th
and 18th centuries was slaves. Warfare and a
revision of Bali's Hindu law codes helped
provide a steady supply of slaves to meet an
ever-increasing overseas demand. War
captives, criminals and debtors were sold
abroad indiscriminately by Balinese rulers,
who maintained a monopoly on the export
trade. In north Bali, Europeans were even
invited in to oversee the trade, and the
Dutch in particular purchased large numbers
of Balinese to serve as laborers, artisans
and concubines in their extensive network of
trading ports - especially their capital at
Batavia (now Jakarta), where Balinese slaves
made up a sizeable portion of the
population. Balinese were even sent to South
Africa, where in the early 18th century they
constituted up to a quarter of the total
number of slaves in that country.
Likewise, Balinese wives and concubines were
very much favored by wealthy Chinese
traders, for their industriousness and
beauty, and the fact that they had no
aversion to pork, unlike the Muslim
Javanese. An early 19th-century trader noted
that Balinese women were among the most
expensive slaves, costing "30, 50 and even
70 Spanish dollars, according to her
physical qualities." 'Me same observer later
comments that the Balinese "regard
deportation from their island as the worst
possible punishment. This attitude results
from their strongly-held conviction that
their Gods have no influence outside Bali
and that no salvation is to be expected for
those who die elsewhere."
The principal kingdoms, which emerged during
this period, were Buleleng in the north,
Karangasem in the east and Mengwi in the
southwest. At various times, these realms
expanded to conquer parts of Bali's
neighboring islands. Mengwi and Buleleng
moved westward into Java, where they became
embroiled in conflicts with and between
rival Muslim kingdoms. The Dutch came to
play an ever larger role in these conflicts,
until eventually the Javanese rulers
discovered that they had mortgaged their
empires to the gin-drinking Europeans. The
Balinese were finally pushed out of eastern
Java by combined Dutch and Javanese forces.
In the east, Karangasem conquered the
neighboring island of Lombok, and at one
point even moved into the western part of
the next island, Sumbawa. It also annexed
Buleleng, and knocked at the gates of Bali's
august, but largely impotent central
kingdom, Mungkung.
By the beginning of the 19th century, the
island's changeable political landscape had
stabilized to an extent, as nine separate
kingdoms consolidated their positions. A
massive eruption of Mt. Tambora on Sumbawa
in 1815 - the largest eruption ever recorded
proved to be a catalyst. A tide of famine
and disease swept Bali in the wake of the
eruption, shredding the traditional fabric
of Balinese society, and with it many of the
fragile political structures of the two
previous centuries.
Paradoxically, Tambora's devastating
eruption brought in its aftermath a period
of unprecedented renewal and prosperity.
Deep layers of nutrient-rich ash from the
volcano made Bali's soils fertile beyond the
wildest imaginings of earlier Balinese
rulers. Rice and other agricultural products
began to be exported in large quantities, at
a time when vociferous anti-slavery
campaigns throughout Europe were bringing an
end to Bali's lucrative slave trade.
Two other factors served to transform the
island's political and economic landscape.
The first was a dramatic decrease in
warfare, as ruling families focused more and
more on internecine struggles and competing
claims for dynastic control, and the
monopolies on duties, tolls and corves labor
that came with it. The second was the
changing nature of foreign trade,
particularly with the founding of Singapore
as a British free trade port in 1819. To
Singapore went Bali's pigs, vegetable oils
and rice. Back came opium, Indian textiles
and guns. Bali was now integrated with world
markets to a degree unknown in the past, a
fact that did not escape the ever-watchful
eyes of colonial Dutch administrators in
Batavia.
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