THE STORY OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF
BALINESE ART

The style of the monument is decidedly Indonesian and so are the two little shrines, also in the same village, with well-defined signs of being one male, the other female. I was invited to accompany Assistant Controleur Grader and Spies on an expedition into the wilds between the mountains Batur and Bratan; descending slippery ravines, into jungles, and up steep hills, we found many old statues overgrown with vegetation, some of which seemed from early Buddhist days, while others looked as if Hinduism had never penetrated into those districts.

Particularly interesting were the pyramids and strange carvings in wood in Sanda and Selulung; or the Polynesian-looking statues in Batukaang and Pengadjaran. Perhaps the most remarkable of antiquities in Bali is the great bronze drum kept in the Pura Panataran Sasih in Pedjeng, the former home of the demon-king Maya Danawa. Some Balinese say that it is one of the suhangs (ear-plugs) of the moon, while others say it is a Sasih, the “ moon “ itself, that fell down to earth and was caught in a tree. It remained there giving a blinding light, preventing some thieves of the neighbourhood from performing their nocturnal work.

One of them, bolder than the rest, decided to extinguish the source of light and, climbing on the tree, urinated on it. The “ moon “ exploded, killing the thief, and fell to the ground in the shape of the present drum, which explains why it is broken at the base. The people rescued it and placed it on a high latticed shrine in the temple. The drum is of the style of the so-called Chinese drums of the Han dynasty often found in Indo-China and even in Java, but it is the largest and most beautiful I have ever seen.

The Pedjeng drum differs somewhat from the usual Han drums; it is elongated, with three great handles, rather like the bronze drums found in Alor, the island near Timor, where they are still used as money , some being worth as much as three thousand guilders.’ The drum is decorated on its sounding surface with a beautiful star in high relief surrounded by a border of sweeping spirals, and on its sides with borders between parallel lines rather like the popular design called “ spears “ (tumbak) by the Balinese: Furthermore, there are strangely primitive, or rather conventionalized, human faces in low relief that have no obvious relation to Chinese art and that are strongly Indonesian, with the characteristic leaf-shaped ornament worn behind the ears, the lobes of which are exaggeratedly distended by the weight of unusual ear-rings.

links [ 1 ] - [ 2 ] - [ 3 ] - [ 4 ]