CHAPTER X From fluidity to fixation

The pre-colonial negara was characterized by a high degree of segmentation. Fragmentation of power and recurrent conflict proved to be normal, while periods of peace and centralization were the exception. Even so, one might still wonder why pre-colonial southern did not witness the rise of a strong state. At first sight, conditions for this would seem to have been favourable. The idea of kingship was known, as were a jurisprudence and a hierarchy which would make central kingship possible. Ecological and economic conditions, too, were advantageous. The southern Balinese plain was highly fertile, relatively densely populated, and not unwieldy in size, so that a central authority would have been able to control large groups of people. Moreover, the great irrigation systems provided a ready opportunity for a strong man to control an appreciable part of the food production. Finally, slave trade and, later, agricultural exports, concentrated in a few harbours, made for an important source of income which might well have been monopolized without too much trouble. Both ideologically and materially, conditions favoured the rise of a centralized southern Balinese state. What actually occurred, however, was the opposite. Not only did Mengwi fail to achieve enduring dominance over the other negara, but even within its own boundaries all attempts to strengthen central authority drowned in violence. A history of two centuries did not provide the Mengwi dynasty with a state, because the fragmented nature of the political system was too stubborn to adapt to permanent centralized control. It would be very wrong to picture the Balinese negara as a 'failing state'. Rather, Bali should be viewed in both the broader context of Southeast and the immediate environment of eastern Indonesia. Recent research on the political landscape of makes it increasingly clear that smallness of scale, instability, and above all fluidity were normal features. Accordingly, negara Mengwi belonged to a set of small-scale polities, each with their own rhythm of rising, expanding, and receding. In Southeast Asia such polities constituted the large majority.1 Viewed in this way, the rise of imperial kingdoms such as Angkor, Ayutthya, and is far less self-

1 Regarding the Malay Peninsula see Wolters 1974; Watson-Andaya and Andaya 1982. For South see Sutherland 1983b, and for Southeast Asia as a whole see Reid 1988. 332 The spell of power

evident than has long been assumed. Moreover, the scale of these Indian• ized 'empires' should be relativized a great deal, since these kingdoms apparently never were centralized polities. They were confederations of various small centres which shared a unitary ideology derived from Indian notions of hierarchy expressed in the image of the World Ruler. Although the negara adorned itself with notions of the cosmos and kingship derived from India, in terms of scope the Balinese political system fits well into the eastern Indonesian context. Future research is likely to shed more light on eastern Indonesian patterns in Balinese culture. Perhaps this will bring out more clearly the position of Bali on the 'anthropological Wallace line' between the Indianized parts of western Indonesia and the islands to the east.2 The issue of the nature of the negara leads to the question as to what kind of kingship Bali had. The history of Bali after 1650 mentions no divine kings. Kings were mortal but kingship was not (Guermonprez 1985; Stuart• Fox 1991). Kingship was one of the central political institutions in which strong leaders sought to realize their power.3 In this context the issue of the relation between order and violence is of interest. It is not correct to view this relation as an unmitigated contrast where order is legitimate and violence illegitimate. The concept of legal kingship was never developed on Bali.4 Rather, both order and violence emanated from a single divine source; both were made manifest through the actions of the king. Actually, the divine 'legitimacy' of successful kingship was manifested through violence, and violence was instrumental in establishing order. Eventually, however, the success of royal leadership depended on the extent to which a king demonstrated his ability to control violence, hence to reinforce order. In other words, kingship was a necessary condition for the continuation of life, and I suppose that for the majority of Balinese the 'flow of life' was unthinkable without kingship. Although the Balinese polity experienced no evolution from chiefdom to state, the negara was anything but static. Against a background of enduring structural order - marked by a ritual axis stretching from the mountains, via

2 In this connection see the important studies by Guermonprez (1985, 1989 and 1991). Regarding the position of king and priest he states: 'When the Indic spectacles are removed [... ] [it] becomes theoretically possible to envision the "Hindu kings" and the "Brahmins" of Bali as transformations of the "war chiefs" and "ritual chiefs" who form remarkable pairs in the ethnography of the ceremonial domains of eastern Indonesia' (1991). See also Fox 1980 and 1988; H.G. Schulte Nordholt 1971. Apart from this, research should be done on early Chinese influences on Bali. Few traces of this are found in Balinese texts; but Chinese influence is very noticeable in material culture, such as in the and in the architecture of the housing of nobles. 3 Following Sahlins (1985:32-54) one might characterize the negara as a heroic polity in which the king was the pivot of significant events. 4 I would like to thank J.-F. Guermonprez for discussing this subject with me.