It was surprising to discover the extent to which the question
of rank obsesses so simple and democratic a people as the Balinise.
In our house every time Gusti came near, everyone scramble down
the veranda steps to place themselves at a level lower than his.
Once in Ubud we received a visit from two little girls, high caste
dancers of ten.
They
were to spend the night in the house, but they would not sleep
unchaperoned and a servant was pointed to watch over them; when
they heard he was to Sleep in the attic, twenty feet up, they
snatched their pillows and ran upstairs, not to be defiled a second
longer by an inferior located above them. They preferred to sleep
on a bard bench rather than in the bed made for them, while the
poor servant had to Sleep on the floor. Once we visited a high
priest, who invited us" remain for lunch; when the food came
he apologized for having to ask us to sit down, because, be said,
" the gods would not it " if he, a Brahmana, placed
himself at a level lower than ours. We observed similar situations
over and over again among people of all classes.
Five
centuries of feudal domination by an aristocracy have made the
Balinese so conscious of caste, the determination of a man's place
in society by his birth, that the whole of theirs social life
and etiquette is moulded by this institution. A member of the
aristocracy is constantly on the look-out so that his inf may
keep to their appointed level and address him in the language
of respect. Princes still demand the adulation and kowtowing their
former vassals, although now their power has ended, and their
prestige is greatly diminished. Caste rules today are I restricted
to the observance of established formulas of etiq even among the
princes, who were always fairly liberal. Castee relations are
relaxed and simple compared with the absurd intolerance of India.
But the common people take for granted the divine superiority
of the aristocracy and are so thoroughly accustomed to arrogance
that they submit to the demands of caste etiquette as a matter
of duty.
By
far the most strict of social taboos is that on intermarriage.
A man may marry any woman he wishes as long as she is of equal
or lower caste, but under no circumstances may a low-caste man
marry a woman of a higher class. For such a man even to have relations
with a woman of the royal or priestly castes was a crime punished
in olden times by the death of both; the woman perhaps stabbed
by a member of her disgraced family, the man thrown into the sea
in a weighted sack, the most degrading of deaths. Today punishment
is simply exile of the guilty couple to the wilds of Djembrana
or the little penal island of Nusa Penida. But like everything
else in Bali, special concessions can be made if the difference
of castes is not very great and the man is influential; in some
cases the affair has been settled by fines, annulment of the marriage,
or a special edict raising the man's caste.