Continued...

One might say, then, that time does not simply pass old-fashioned villages by rather, in many ways they choose strategically to ignore it.

Thus, Korn underrated the fluidity between more and less courtly modes of expression and action. He shared with his predecessors the conservative status quo view of Balinese society and authority which sees the adoption of Hindu-caste values as a permanent and qualitative shift into a fuller state of culture. A vantage from the East-Central elaborate court centers understandably confirms this notion. But to gain a proper appreciation of social and cultural processes on the island, it must be recognized that the dichotomy between old-fashioned pre-Hindu versus Hinducaste is neither exact nor necessarily serial. There are variable ways of conforming to bits and pieces of Hinduized beliefs and practices; reversals are frequent and not inevitably regarded by Balinese as failures. It is the positive values which prize the ebb out of - as a necessary prelude to a subsequently renewed flow into - the courtly version of social life we call the romance of Bali.

Finally, Korn's strict division of Bali into the Central-East with pacatu lands and Badung and Tabanan without them was doubtless exaggerated. If Tabanan did not have royal service groups alienated from local village-areas prior to 1932, this did not prevent it from manifesting memories of such a system forty years later. Current local lore and practice echo pacatu traditions to a degree which makes it doubtful they are a total fabrication. In sum, Korn's apanage theory was an overstatement, but it must be admired as an important improvement on the earlier simple dichotomy