THE CASTES

Acording to the legends, the Brahmanas sprang out of the mouth of Brahma, the Satria from his arms, and the Wesia from his feet. Perhaps the reason why the common people look upon their nobility with such respect is that they have still an unshaken belief in their divine origin. The true Balinese religion consists mainly in the worship of the family ancestors, with the patriarchfounder of the village as the communal god.

Thus it was easy for the conquerors to establish their own dead kings as ancestral gods, since they, too, descended from canonized kings and holymen who were in turn descendants of the highest divinities. This fitted perfectly with the Balinese idea of rank and with their cult of ancestors. In many legends the great kings and religious teachers of the past were considered as reincarnations of gods, so I was never surprised when a priest or a prince assured me in all seriousness that his family descended from Indra or Wisnu, or some such divine character.

Such is the caste complex of some Balinese that I often found silly boys from Den Pasar posing as members of the higher castes when they visited a strange town where they were not known. Some common people say that once they were of a higher caste and that their present state is due to faults committed by their ancestors. Good behaviour on this earth brings a raising of caste in the next incarnation, and bad behaviour the opposite; consequently social position in the world of men is the result of behaviour in former lives.

Many Wesias claim that their families were Satrias lowered in rank while they were ordinary humans; such was the case of the ancestor of the royal families of Badung and Tabanan, the legendary Arya Damar, who was lowered to a Wesia. On the other hand, the Balinese insist that the Radja of Karangasem was a Wesia who had himself elevated to the Satria caste after the fall of the Klungkung dynasty.

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