Continued...

Bali now: an indigenous retrospect (pre-1906 to Post-1971)

Distinguished birth is like a cipher: it has no power in itself lice wealth, or talent, or personal excellence, but it tells with all the power of a cipher, when added to either of the others.

J.F. Boyes
Having seen how history has taken Bali into account, it is time to appreciate how Bali takes history into account. Since 1597 changing interpretations of Balinese events and institutions by outsiders have been engaging flexible interpretations by insiders, and the ideals and images on both sides make Bali look more epic, more rigidly and permanently stratified, than it actually is. For example, what Schrieke says of Middle Java is still true of Bali today, at least in its more ambitious circles:

Descent was the proof of legitimacy par excellence. The fewer the evidences of a right of succession on the ground of heredity, the greater the effort which had to be made to adduce supernatural proofs of the justice of claims. And when claims based on heredity were (to say the least) dubious, the historiographer made every effort to smooth out genealogical irregularities (1957).