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THE FAMILY A Balinese feels that his most important duty is to marry soon as he comes of age and to raise a family to perpetuate his line. A bachelor is in Bali an abnormal, incomplete being devoid of all social significance since only settled married men can l come members of the village association. Even pedandas, the high priests, do not conform to the ascetic abstention favoured by orthodox Hindus and invariably marry. Thus every Balinese centres all his hopes in having children, preferably male children, who will look after him in his old age, and, most important of all, sons who will take the proper care his remains after he is dead, performing the necessary rites liberate his soul for reincarnation, so it will not become an aimless wandering ghost. From paintings and temple reliefs, they a familiar with the fate that awaits the childless in Hades, the swarga, where a woman who dies without children is condemn to carry a gigantic worm suckling at her useless breasts. A men who does not obtain children from his wife has the right divorce her and get back the money he paid for her; or if she d or runs away, he remarries as soon as possible. Often the sterile wife will herself suggest and even provide for a second wife for her husband. There are, however, many childless couples that because of personal attachment or for economic reasons remain monogamous and are content to borrow or rather be given a child by a neighbour or a relative to bring up as their own.
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