AFTER THE WORLD, the mountains, and the cardinal directions
were created, and here were trees, fruits, and flowers, the
gods made four human beings out of red earth, whom they provided
with utensils to work with and houses to live in. Batara Siwa,
the Supreme Lord, next made four mature girls for wives of the
four men. The god of love, Batara Semara, made mating a pleasure
so that the women would be fertilized, and eventually the four
couples had many children: 117 boys and 118 girls, who grew,
became adolescent, married, and bad children. But there remained
a girl without a husband. Broken-hearted, she went into the
forest and there found the stump of a jackfruit tree (nangka)
which Siwa had carved, to amuse himself, into the likeness of
a human being. The girl made love to the wooden figure and became
pregnant. Out of pity for her, Semara gave life to the figure
so that she also could have a husband, and the couple became
the ancestors of the ngatew6l clan," whose totem is the
nangka tree
Another legend tells us that the gods concentrated to make human
beings and produced two couples; one yellow in color: Ketok
Pita and Djenar; another red: Abang and Barak. From the yellow
couple was born a boy, Nyuh Gading, "Yellow Coconut"
and a girl named Kuning. The second couple had also two children,
a boy named Tanah Barak, "Red Earth" and a girl Lewek.
Yellow Coconut married Lewek; Red Earth married Kuning; and
their descendants did the same until the population of Bali
was created."
There are endless tales like these relating the origin of the
Balinese to magic or ordinary unions of the eternal male and
female principles, elements of great importance in the religion
around which their life revolves. Their supreme deity is Siwa,
the esoteric combination of all the gods and all the forces
of nature, he who is the hermaphrodite ("hindu") in
the sense that within him are the male and female creative forces,
the complete, perfect unity. Men and women must imitate their
gods to attain some of that divine " completeness "
by uniting to form families that worship common ancestors in
the family shrine of each Balinese household. The various families
that compose a village all worship in turn a common ancestor,
the village god represented by the " Navel," the pus6h,
the temple of common origin. Family ties are consequently the
most important factor in Balinese life; a continuous sequence
that relates the individual to his family, to his community,
and to the total of the Balinese people in a relationship that
represents race and nationality to them. A woman who marries
a Chinese, a Mohammedan, or a European automatically ceases
to be a Balinese.
