THE ANCIENT SURVIVAL: THE BALI AGA
At one time the island was populated by pure Indonesians, an
ancient people who filed and blackened their teeth. They lived
in small communities, family clans ruled by a council of Elders
who acted as the priests of their religion. Their cult centered
in the worship of the powerful spirits of nature, and especially
those of their ancestors, with whom they continued to live,
a great family of both the dead and the living. Occasionally,
by means of mediums and sacrifices, they brought their ancestral
spirits down to this earth to protect them. They buried their
dead or simply abandoned them in the jungle to be carried away
by the spirits, and it is possible that they even ate parts
of the bodies in order to absorb the magic power inherent in
their ancient headmen,
The pure descendants of these people, calling themselves Bali
Aga or Bali Mula, the " original " Balinese, still
live, isolated and independent, in the mountains where they
found refuge from imperialistic strangers. Hidden in the bills
of East Bali, near Karangasem, lies the village of Tenganan,
where the most conservative of the Bali Aga preserve the old
traditions with the greatest zeal. Tenganan is a rabidly isolated
community, socially and economically separate from the rest
of Bali, almost a republic in itself. It is shut off from the
world by a solid wall that surrounds the entire village, which
is meant to keep outsiders away, and is broken only by four
gates, each facing one of the cardinal points. Of these gates,
three open to the gardens and plantations of the village, but
the main gate is so narrow that a stout person has difficulty
in squeezing through. Such is the obsession for isolation in
Tenganan that there is an official specially appointed to sweep
the village after the visits of strangers, to obliterate their
footprints.
We became acquainted with I-Tanggu, a youngish man with fingernails
four inches long, who was the perbekel of Tenganan, the representative
of his village with the Dutch Government. We were surprised
to find him quite sociable. Once we played bost to him in Den
Pasar and from then on we were often invited to visit Tenganan.
Unlike the rest of the villages in Bali, there is hardly any
vegetation around the Tenganan houses, which are all exactly
alike and are arranged in tows on each side of stone-paved avenues.
In the central place is the council house where the Elders meet,
a long shed about ten feet wide by some seventy feet long, strongly
built and apparently very old. Farther along are other buildings
for public use, the purpose of some kept a secret. The most
curious are the unique mill for grinding kemiri nuts to obtain
oil, and the wooden Ferris-wheel, usually dismantled, in which
the women revolve for hours in a strange rite. The dwelling
of I-Tanggu' is just like all the others: a small gate reached
by a flight of steps leads into a court in which are the sleeping-quarters,
the kitchen, and a long house for relatives and for storage'.
There is also a small empty shrine where the spirits may rest
when they visit their descendants.
