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C H A P T E R F I V E The Age of the Dutch Rajas (1908–1942) Two earthquakes, one geological and the other social, shook the temple at the beginning of the twentieth century . The first initiated a period of renovation (even, perhaps, a re-imaging) of the physical temple. The second , the Dutch occupation of Bali, began a much longer and in the end more drastic series of transformations of Balinese society, with perhaps even greater consequences for the temple. At first a mere quiver of the ground, this social seismic movement did not reach its convulsive climax until the 1960s. Its reverberations are still felt today. A Colonial Order Constructed When the Dutch conquered South Bali (1906–1908), they drew new maps of Bali that delineated with sharp boundaries their new administrative districts. The Dutch governmental divisions only partially coincided with the indigenous ones, and in any case, they introduced a totally new conception of political authority based on a simple hierarchy of increasingly larger territorial units, each headed by an official, and culminating in the top colonial official in Batavia (now Jakarta) and in Holland , in the Dutch parliament. In Bali, the Dutch set up a colonial administration made up of local Balinese officials under a few higher Dutch administrators. In the beginning they chose, and chose to train for the jobs, members of the Balinese titled groups, whom the Dutch considered to be a natural aristocracy. These great and little native officials were the ones that the Balinese popularly called the raja raja Belanda. Their authority came from the Dutch (the Belanda ), but they thought of themselves and behaved as rajas toward their subjects. The Dutch gave their new administrative posts Balinese names drawn from the language of the indigenous royal courts.1 They called their new village head a prabekel (or perbekel) and his territory a désa. The term “prabekel ,” which had signified a personal vassal of a raja, now meant the representative of a centralized colonial government. “Désa” had meant the population served by a pura désa, pura puseh, and pura dalem, but now it meant the territory administered by a prabekel in the new sense. Above each group of prabekel came a punggawa, again a term formerly meaning a personal vassal of a raja. Above the punggawa were placed the regency officials— the regen and the residen. The old terms thus acquired new meanings, and the Balinese quickly learned to shift easily between old and new meanings, but when they needed to be explicit they invented new verbal distinctions, for instance between désa dinas for the new governmental unit (“dinas” comes from the Dutch word dienst, “service”), and désa adat (“adat” comes from Malay, and ultimately Arabic, and signifies here “customary”) for the earlier ritual unit. A similar distinction developed, at the banjar level, between klian dinas and klian adat. The Dutch introduced another novel social distinction , which was to have far-reaching consequence in the latter half of the century, when it served as the impetus for the growth of a modern social class system. Again infusing old terms with new meanings, the Dutch made a distinction between pangayah and pamijian. Pangayah indicates those villagers who were required by the new colonial government to work on building roads. This was particularly onerous and demanding labor, since the Dutch made it a priority to complete a network of roads over the entire island during the first decade of their sovereignty. Pamijian were those who were excused from this corvée work. “Pangayah” is the Balinese term for “work for the gods or for kings.” “Pamijian ” comes from an old word meaning “a person who is under the direct governance of a raja.” Those whom the Dutch called pamijian were the triwangsa, the nobility . Pamijian were governed directly by the district governor , not by the local prabekel or by the punggawa above him. All over the island, of course, many people tried to be classified as pamijian. Excusing the pamijian from the corveé was one step toward a new sharpening of the distinction between sudrawangsa and triwangsa. The second was the establishment of a civil service in which triwangsa held most of- fices. The third was the opening of a few schools in which select Balinese would learn the language (Malay) and the skills of government work. Here, too, most of the pupils were triwangsa.2 With these...

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