Bali Chronicles. Willard A. Hanna
Dewa Agung as Emperor and Symbol
At the end of the fifteenth century, then, the Dewa Agung and his remote court at Gelgel, who suddenly fell heir to the still glittering legacy of the vanquished and vanished Modjapahit Empire, achieved previously undreamed of splendor and authority. The sixteenth century was destined to be Bali’s golden age. Under Batu Renggong, who became the Dewa Agung in about the year 1550, the various Balinese principalities were welded together into a strongly centralized kingdom. Batu Renggong followed up his successes at home by launching military expeditions abroad. He conquered Blambangan, where he installed a vassal ruler and supported him against Mataram’s counterattack. Then he turned his attention eastward to the islands of Sumbawa and Lombok, which he both conquered and colonized. Political and military triumphs of Batu Renggong’s reign were more than matched by a cultural renaissance. The Balinese transformed the Modjapahit influences to conform to their own special needs and abilities. They created what is in fact the contemporary Balinese culture, endowing it with that special element of Balinese genius, the secret of eternal renewal of youth. The Balinese still share with the Javanese many common traditions of language, music, dance, sculpture, and literature, but the gap between Hindu Bali and Muslim Java is almost as wide as that between youth and old age. The older, the Balinese-Modjapahit culture, paradoxically preserved its freshness and animation, while the younger, the Javanese-Mataram society, grew both sober and somber. It is the riddle and the miracle of Bali that from the embers of Modjapahit Java should have been ignited the fires which still burn bright in the neighboring islet.
Emergence and Divergence of Eight Radjadoms
Gelgel’s golden age flickered during the reign of Batu Renggong’s son, Radja Bekung, and died out under his grandson, Di Made. Radja Bekung engaged in an ill-advised adventure in Blambangan which all but provoked a full-scale invasion by Mataram of Bali itself. He lost the respect of the other Balinese princes, who became openly defiant, and he played host to the first Dutch visitors, whose arrival eventually proved to have been an omen of evil. But it was Di Made who suffered the undeniable, the irreparable reverses. He lost Blambangan, Sumbawa, and Lombok, and he lost also the allegiance of the other princes. Di Made’s successor, Gusti Sideman, abandoned the kraton of Gelgel, which was clearly under a curse, built a new one in nearby Klungkung, and sought to rule as grandly as had his predecessors. But it was already too late. The Dewa Agung was to be less prominent thereafter than various of his presumed vassals. Klungkung therefore never matched Gelgel in glory, but Bali’s silver age, which set in when Klungkung was founded, saw the island-wide dissemination of the Gelgel culture.
The Dewa Agung and his court in Klungkung continued to symbolize Hindu imperial grandeur but never again imperial power. The other princes became the Dewa Agung’s rivals and even his enemies; their own punggawa (chiefs) at times presumed to virtual autonomy; the pendanda (priests) sometimes assumed almost independent temporal power over villages and groups of villages which fell theoretically within the domain of the radjas. The ruling families, princely and priestly, were polygamously intermarried and easily provoked to blood feuds. Divination, prophecy, and mere superstition were factors of comparable significance to jealousy, intrigue, and military conflict in conditioning personal and state affairs. As the domain and the authority of the Dewa Agung diminished, there emerged a dozen more or less clearly defined little independent radjadoms. Eight of these still survive as geographic and political entities (now administrative districts). They are: Gianjar, Badung, Bangli, and Tabanan in addition to Klungkung in the South-Central region, and Buleleng, Karangasem, and Djembrana in the North, the Northeast, and the Northwest respectively.
The history of these eight Balinese radjadoms of modern times— and those of adjacent Lombok—is closely linked to that of Dutch colonial penetration. It is a story which remains as yet to be very accurately reconstructed from fragmentary and conflicting records, many of which are still lost in Dutch and Indonesian archives. Some inspired student may one day search out the sources in order to write what could be a classic of East–West relations as revealed in the vivid Balinese microcosm. For present purposes and with present resources, it must suffice merely to identify the protagonists and to establish the progression by reference to radjas and radjadoms.
The Dewa Agung and his radjadom of Klungkung survived but did not flourish, for the Dewa Agung himself was powerless and his kingdom was minute. Little Gianjar rivaled Klungkung as a center of traditional Balinese culture and even presumed at times to military might. But until the latter part of the nineteenth century, Gianjar was never at the focus of Balinese events, and neither were the neighboring states of Bangli, Tabanan, or, except for brief intervals, Badung. These states shared with Gianjar and Klungkung the fertile rice lands of the southern slopes of the central mountains and shared also the rich culture which rich rice lands nourished. Mengwi, a state of the center, enjoyed occasional prominence but overreached itself and was partitioned among its neighbors (1891), surviving today only in the loyalty of the people to the family of the traditional ruler and to the state shrines. The Dewa Agung’s military and political powers passed first to Buleleng, the large northern state which was the first focus of foreign commerce and international competition; next to Karangasem, the large eastern state which came to dominate also the island of Lombok; and eventually to the Dutch. Buleleng and Karangasem, sometimes friends, sometimes enemies, generally under the rule of members of the same royal family, were to become the two power factors of modern Bali.
Gusti Pandji Sakti, who came to the throne at the end of the seventeenth century, was primarily responsible for Buleleng’s assertion of island hegemony. By skillful political and military maneuvers he extended his own authority throughout most of Karangasem and Djembrana, exacted deferential treatment from the southern states, and concentrated next upon Blambangan. He listened sympathetically to an appeal from Mas Purba, the heir-apparent to the throne of Blambangan, who sought military aid in ousting a rival and resisting Mataram pressures. Gusti Pandji Sakti sent an expedition to Java (1697), which placed Mas Purba more or less securely on the throne, but succeeded more convincingly in establishing his own claim to succession to the Dewa Agung’s former power. But Gusti Pandji Sakti’s son-in-law, Gusti Agung Sakti, the ruler of Mengwi, presently usurped his father-in-law’s own kingdom of Buleleng (1711). He went on to consolidate his position by another adventure in Java, where Mas Purba had wavered in loyalty and flirted both with Mataram and the Dutch. The joint radjadom of Buleleng–Mengwi flourished for the better part of the eighteenth century but then separated again and forfeited power to Karangasem.
Karangasem began its rise to prominence by seizing the opportunity to champion Balinese interests in Lombok at a time when Buleleng was preoccupied by exploits in Java. Upon slipping from Balinese control in the time of Di Made, Lombok had fallen under the domination of Sumbawa and Goa (Makassar), sometimes one, sometimes the other, sometimes both. It had been subjected by and through these states to strong Islamizing influences. The paramount radja was converted to Islam along with various of his court; aided if not in fact compelled by soldiers from Sumbawa and Goa, the radja then attempted to expel the large Balinese Hindu population already living in the island. The new Muslim clique in Lombok had to contend meanwhile with very troublesome little rebellions among the warlike Sassak tribespeople, who made up the greater part of the population. Karangasem found this situation conducive to its own endeavors to bring Lombok once again under Balinese control, an objective which, after half a century of intermittent effort, it quite clearly accomplished. By the mid-seventeenth century Lombok was parceled out among four weak little radjadoms, each ruled by a Balinese prince who owed his allegiance to Karangasem.
It may be of help in fixing in mind the main currents of Balinese history to do as many of the Balinese themselves do, which is to accept a much abridged version of events from Modjapahit times onward and to dwell upon a simplified pattern of conflict mainly between the North and the South. According to popular Balinese account, the Modjapahit conquest of Bali and collapse in Java occurred in quick succession and the leading characters in the former, Gadjah Mada and Arja Damar, accompanied Bra Widjana, the fallen Madjapahit Emperor to Gelgel to re-establish his court. In appreciation for his distinguished services, Bra Widjana named Arja Damar as Prime Minister and assigned him extensive