This contrasts sharply with the holiday garb of Western visitors who, regardless of their physical stature, seem to insist on wearing the scantiest possible clothing wherever they go. While this may be tolerable at the beach, at a temple festival such disregard for propriety is a serious insult to the Balinese and to their gods!
Visitors to the major towns who browse in shops and admire the range of goods on display—from antique carvings to ultramodern computers—are bound to come across many fashionable textile products. Boutiques have on display clothes made from materials with patterns and designs that are replaced every few months by new ones. Designers, dyers and seamstresses in many small to medium-sized clothing firms churn out a bewildering array of inexpensive garments for the fast-moving international trade, partly to fill orders received from the industrialized countries. Though such fashion products lack nothing in inventiveness or creativity, they are by no means "traditional" or "Balinese," and there is only a tenuous link between these fabrics and the traditional crafts of cloth making. Just as culture and people are changing in response to the opening up of the island by tourists, so the products intended for these visitors are constantly being adjusted to meet the new needs and demands they create.
Figure 1.3: Hip cloth. Cotton and bagu yarn. Supplementary weft and endek. Batur region. 214 x 108 cm. MEB He 15969.
Figure 1.4: A procession on the occasion of a great purification ceremony for the souls of the dead, Sanur.
Figure 1.5: Temple festival after renovation of the sanctuary, Rich variety of textile adornments and offerings, Sanur,
Figure 1.6: A textile stall's colorful display at a market in Denpasar,
ORIGINS
Bali has a long history, the greater part of which Is obscured by the mists of time, and archaeologists have only just begun to bring to light small fragments of this past. Written records begin in the 8th century A.D., and the story told in these early Inscriptions and chronicles mirrors the influence of the great Javanese empires. Their courts were attended by Buddhist and Hindu scholars—literati who partly were instrumental in propagating these religions of Indian provenance. A sustained change thus took place in the culture and society of Bali, in which mercantile influences from China, India and other islands of the archipelago also played a role.
In discussing the traditional textiles of Bali—In describing the complicated techniques used to make double ikat geringsing (see Chapter 9), the patterning of cepuk (see Chapter 8) and perada (see Chapter 4)—it quickly becomes apparent that their origin must be considered to a great extent against this historical background. It would be wrong, however, to attempt to explain these textiles and their uses in terms of a single origin or a single line of development. The great diversity of Balinese textile arts—their independence, creativity and rich traditions—points to a long and continuous evolution within the context of the island itself and its culture. Thus textiles of the most diverse kinds have quite specific functions and meanings which are typical of Bali, and cannot be understood on any basis other than that of Balinese culture itself.
Figure 1.7: Textile lamak serving to adorn an abode of the gods in a stone temple. South Bali.
According to written tradition (the Purana Bali text), the inhabitants of the island were originally ignorant of rice cultivation in terraced and irrigated fields, of metalworking, and of the growing and use of cotton. They formerly went about virtually naked, says the same source, although they did make loosely fitting garments of bark cloth, fashioning loincloths by passing long strips of pounded bast fibers between their legs and around their hips.
Though to the best of our knowledge there are no bark cloth garments from Bali to be found in any museum collections, memory of the material and its use lives on, especially in remote mountain regions. During the difficult times of the Second World War, sleeveless open jackets of bark cloth were revived in mountain villages. In addition to this bark cloth, it is said that a thread from the leaves of the bagu plant (Boehmeria nivea Gand, white ramie) was spun and woven into fabric (Fig. 1.3).
The Purana Bali also states that it was the goddess Ratih, wife of the god Semara, the Raja of the Invisible, who, together with her companions, instructed mankind in the cultivation of two types of cotton—transcribed in Indonesian as kapas cicih and kapas tahun. Rocky soils and (non-irrigated) ladang fields were well suited to these crops. The goddess taught the entire process of working the cotton to make finished cloths for men and for women. She also supplied the necessary equipment—the traditional cagcag loom (Fig. 3.11) on which to make songkèt and endek materials. In addition, she taught them elaborate techniques of dyeing.
The percipient observer, refusing to be misled by stories of a tabula rasa in Bali created by Hinduism and Buddhism of a Javanese and more recently Chinese cast, will no doubt discern many archaic elements in Bali. Textiles are no exception. Apart from the bark cloths already mentioned, such elements include a large number of plaitings and braidings. Plaited mats still figure importantly, however in a way that is visually unspectacular and is therefore commonly overlooked. They are indispensable in shrines, where they are used as underlays for offerings and figures of gods. They are also used in death rites to wrap the mortal remains of the deceased before cremation. Hangings of light beige and rich green strips of young palm leaves, known as larnak, appear prominently and are likely to catch the eye of even the casual observer. These are most commonly rectangular in shape, and are used for the ritual adornment of offering stelae and shrine niches. They are also hung like bibs around the necks of "cremation bulls" before the latter are borne to the cremation ground (Fig. 1.15). There are many sizes of palm-leaf lamak with different patterns, sometimes with additional red ornamentation. Although the matter has not been investigated in detail, it is reasonable to assume that lamak patterns and sizes are specific to the particular locality and occasion. In other words, different types of lamak are used depending on the place, the festival and the deity being worshipped.
In addition to such rapidly perishable plaitings, there are also more durable textile lamak (Fig. 1.8) whose patterns are sometimes identical with those made of palm leaf. These are treasured as heirlooms and carefully preserved, and are brought out solely for the important annual temple festivals, where they are attached to the abodes of the gods (Fig. 1.7). Today the most common form of lamak has a hard base trimmed with Chinese képéng coins and mirrors. These are suspended from shrine niches, while beneath them another palm-leaf lamak, invisible to the observer, serves as an underlay.
Figure 1.8: Lamak, ceremonial hanging for abodes of the gods. Supplementary warp on cotton. Bali, near Denpasar. Pre-1940.
