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THE FAMILY " AFTER THE WORLD, the mountains, and the cardinal directions were created, and there were trees, fruits, and flowers, the gods made four human beings out of red earth, whom they provided with utensils to work with and houses to live in. Batara Siwa. the Supreme Lord, next made four mature girls for wives of the four men. The god of love, Batara Semara, made mating a pleasure so that the women would be fertilized, and eventually the four couples had many children: 117 boys and 118 girls, who grew, became adolescent, married, and had children. But there remained a girl without a husband. Broken-hearted, she went into the forest and there found the stump of a jackfruit tree (nangka) which Siwa had carved, to amuse himself, into the likeness of a human being. The girl made love to the wooden figure and became pregnant. Out of pity for her, Semara gave life to the figure so that she also could have a husband, and the couple became the ancestors of the ngatewel clan," whose totem is the nangka tree. Another legend tells us that " the gods concentrated to make human beings and produced two couples; one yellow in color: Ketok Pita and Djenar; another red: Abang and Barak. From the yellow couple was born a boy, Nyoh Gading, 'Yellow Coconut; and a girl named Kuning. The second couple had also two children, a boy named Tanah Barak, 'Red Earth,' and a girl Lewek. Yellow Coconut married Lewek; Red Earth married Kuning; and their descendants did the same until the population of Bali was created." There are endless tales like these relating the origin of the Balinese to magic or ordinary unions of the eternal male and female principles, elements of great importance in the religion around which their life revolves. Their supreme deity is Siwa, the esoteric combination of all the gods and all the forces of nature, he who is the hermaphrodite ( wandu ) in the sense that within him are the male and female creative forces, the complete, perfect unity. Men and women must imitate their gods to attain some of that divine " completeness " by uniting to form families that worship common ancestors in the family shrine of each Balinese household. The various families that compose a village all worship in turn a common ancestor, the village god represented by the " Navel," the puseh, the temple of common origin. Family ties are consequently the most important factor in Balinese life; a continuous sequence that relates the individual to his family, to his community, and to the total of the Balinese people a relationship that represents race and nationality to them. woman who marries a Chinese, a Mohammedan, or a European automatically ceases to be a Balinese.
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