| Studies of the history and culture of Bali have tended to represent Balinese nobles and commoners as culturally distinct groups, emphasizing, for instance, nobles' "Indic" cultural roots, or their hierarchical ideology, and juxtaposing these with commoners' "Austronesian" heritage and egalitarian values. In fact, however, nobles' and commoners' practices and social organization reflect a shared cosmology, inscribed in and recreated through specific institutions and situations through ritual enactments and in daily practice. Indeed, irrigation organizations, which are often viewed as the paradigmatic egalitarian commoner institution, and precolonial polities, which are supposedly the quintessential example of Indic elite ideology, are understood by the Balinese according to a common set of cosmological principles. This common cosmological basis for understanding agricultural productivity, human reproduction, and political power was useful for rulers as a means of legitimating their authority and extending control over production, but it also limited their authority in important ways, providing symbolic tools for legitimating conquest, as well as stable hierarchy. Noble and commoner elements of Hindu Balinese society are thus not altogether distinct and certainly not incommensurable, but rather represent positioned articulations of a shared set of cultural themes. |
