By their ingenuity and constant activity they have raised their
main occupation, the cultivation of rice, to levels unsurpassed
by other rice-growing nations. Being essentially agriculturists,
they are not interested in navigation and trade; living the
easy life of the tropics, they are satisfied and well fed. The
majority works the land for themselves, so they have not yet
become wage earners and have enough freedom and leisure left
to dedicate to spiritual relaxation. They are extraordinarily
fond of music, poetry, and dancing, which have produced a remarkable
theatre. Their culture, unlike that of their cultural ancestors,
the Javanese, is not yet in frank decline. Even the common people
are better agriculturists, better craftsmen and artists than
the average Javanese. The Balinese are by no means a primitive
people.
Moreover, unlike the natives of the South Seas and similar races
under white domination, the Balinese are not a dying people;
far from that, in the last ten years a constant increase in
the birth rate has been recorded. The 1930 census gave the population
of Bali as 1,148,000 people, or about 500 to the square mile,
an enormous figure when compared with the 41 per square mile
of the United States. This includes the foreign population:
7,1935 Chinese, 1,544 Arabs and other Mohammedans, and 411 Europeans,
of which only a small percentage are of pure European stock,
the rest being Eurasians and certain Balinese, Javanese, Chinese,
and Japanese who are given equal standing with Europeans by
a decree making them " Staatsblad European."
For those interested in knowing something of the racial origins
of the Balinese, it may be added that they are by no means a
pure race, but a complicated mixture of the native aborigines,
with superimposed layers of higher cultures of various types.'
The Balinese are descendants of a pure “Indonesian "
race mixed with the Hindus of Central and East Java, who were
them selves Indonesians of Hindu culture, with Indian and Chinese
blood. To these mixtures are further added traces of the Polynesian
and Melanesian, the result being a picturesque variety of types
among the Balinese: from the noble Hindu and Northern Chinese,
to the Malay-Javanese, Polynesian, and even Papuan. While some
have sleek hair, high nose bridges, and cream-yellow skins,
some are dark and curly haired like South Sea Islanders. Some
have large almond eyes, often with the " Mongoloid fold,
convex noses, and. fine mouths; others have the concave, flat,
broad Noses, the squinty eyes, bulging foreheads, and prognathic
jaws of the more primitive Indonesians. Thus the Balinese of
today are the same people as the Hindu-Javanese of pre-Mohammedan
Java, in the sense that they both underwent the same racial
and Cultural influences.
