LAW AND JUSTICE

It was the siesta hour, but instantly everybody was up and out; they grabbed sticks, spears, agricultural implements, or whatever was at hand and rushed out, some on bicycles, towards the sound of the kulkul. Everybody in the bandjar turned out and on the road we even met the old judge, our neighbour, who could hardly walk, but who tagged along brandishing a great sword. It turned out to be simply a fire that was quickly extinguished with everybody's aid.

When the excitement was over, we returned home with the crowd, listening to their reminiscences of recent cases of alarm and of men who ran amuck and were killed on the spot. Desecration or theft of temple property, if at night, can also be punished with immediate death. One night in a village near Kesiman two men were caught in the act of robbing the temple. The alarm was sounded and the villagers killed the two men as they put up a fight. They showed us the weapons that were taken from the thieves.

Other serious offences are the consistent failure to perform village duties, disobedience to officials, refusal to pay fines, repeated absence from meetings, theft of village property, especially of legal village documents, adultery, incest, bestiality, rape of an immature girl, witchery, the cutting of certain trees, theft of irrigation water, or damage to another's property, like allowing cattle to trample a planted field.

Crimes against the prince, or even against Brahmanas, are severely punished, but they do not affect the spiritual cleanliness of the village - one more instance of the position of the aristocracy as outsiders. An old man told us that in former times a prince might kill or mutilate a man for offences against caste, as, for instance, for a common man to h, had relations with a noble girl. A man who stole from the prir might have had his hands cut off.

Once we had the opportunity to observe the old-fashioned manner in which an ordinary thief is punished: Passing through Silekarang, we met a strange procession led by an old man who carried two sheaves of rice on a pole. There were flowers and leaves decorating the sheaves, and he wore red hibiscus on his grey hair. hiss wrinkled brown body was smeared with broad streaks and crosses of white paint all over his face, chest, and back.He was followed by a mock retinue of some fifty men carrying green boughs, yelling and beating little bamboo kulkuls.