EVERYDAY LIFE IN BALI

COSTUME AND ADORNMENT

In ancient times men and women wore ear-rings, and ancient statues show that, like the Dyaks of Borneo, they distended their ear-lobes until they hung below the shoulders, weighted down by heavy gold ornaments. Today some men have pierced ears because when children they wore leaf-shaped ear-ornaments (rumbing) of gold set with precious stones.

Little girls distend the holes of their ear-lobes with rolls of dry leaf or with a nutmeg seed until the hole is large enough to receive the large rolls of lontar leaf for everyday or their replicas of gold (subang) for feasts. The subangs are hollow conical cylinders of beaten gold three inches long by one in diameter, closed at one end, imitating in shape the palm-leaf subang.

Only girls wear them and after marriage they consider the wearing of subangs a coquetry that is out of place, although married women of high caste may wear them at feasts. Rings of gold set with rubies are popular, but the most fashionable today are those set with an English gold guinea. Bracelets are in good taste only if made of gold and tortoise-shell set with rubies, star sapphires, or little diamonds.

The Balinese are as fastidious in the care of their bodies as they are about dress, and people of all classes, conditions permitting, make almost a cult of cleanliness. They bathe frequently during the day, whenever they feel hot or after strenuous work, but two baths a day are the rule, in the morning and evening, before each meal.

Many villages have formal baths with separate compartments for men and women, divided by carved stone walls and provided with water-spouts in the shape of fantastic animals, or simple natural pools or streams fitted with bamboo pipes and low walls. Often the favourite bathing-place is a shallow spot in the river where men on one side, women on the other, squat on the water, remaining for a long time in animated conversation, scrubbing themselves with pumice stone that removes superfluous hair and invigorates the skin, or rubbing their backs with a rough stick or against a large stone placed there for the purpose. In a river near Gianyar we often saw a group of women sitting in the water in a circle, their feet radiating from the centre, gossiping until after dark.

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