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THE SOCIAL ORDER Princes still demand the adulation and kowtowing of their former vassals, although now their power has ended and their prestige is greatly diminished. Caste rules today are largely restricted to the observance of established formulas of etiquette even among the princes, who were always fairly liberal. Caste relations are relaxed and simple compared with the absurd intoler ance of India. But the common people take for granted the divine superiority of the aristocracy and are so thoroughly accustomed to arrogance that they submit to the demands of caste etiquette as a matter of duty. By far the most strict of social taboos is that on intermarriage.A man may marry any woman he wishes as long as she is of equal or lower caste, but under no circumstances may a low-caste man marry a woman of a higher class. For such a man even to have relations with a woman of the royal or priestly castes was a crime punished in olden times by the death of both; the woman perhaps ,tabbed by a member of her disgraced family, the man thrown into the sea in a weighted sack, the most degrading of deaths. To day punishment is simply exile of the guilty couple to the wilds of Djembrana or the little penal island of Nusa Penida. But like everything else in Bali, special concessions can be made if the difference of castes is not very great and the man is influential; u some cases the affair has been settled by fines, annulment of 'lie marriage, or a special edict raising the man's caste.
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