Expansion and Internalization of Modes of Warfare in Pre-colonial Baliout that the endemic warfare among the small micro-states tended to
consist in raids and robberies; pitched battles were usually broken off
after one or a few people had fallen.^12 Religion played a role as providing
an ideal of kingship and power. Classical Indian kingship tends to be
obsessed with warfare, which is reflected in the literary works preserved
on Bali and parallels conceptions in other Indianized areas of Southeast
Asia.^13 Nevertheless, the role of kings in terms of warfare may have
changed over the course of centuries; we shall return to this issue later.
Expansion and dark centuriesThe image of Majapahit looms large in Balinese imaginations of its his-
tory. Myths, legends and much later chronicle accounts refer to the an-
cient Javanese empire as a source for the political and social order. The
three higher castes (Triwangsa, i.e. Brahmana, Kshatriya and Wesia) and
at least some of the low-caste Jabas (Sudras) trace their origins to Java.
The actual history of Majapahit rule on Bali is poorly chronicled and
restricted to a few references in epigraphic and literary sources.^14 The
period following the decline and dissolution of Majapahit in the early
sixteenth century is not much clearer. The well-known geographical
treatise Suma Oriental by Tomé Pires (c. 1512–15) merely mentions Bali
as an island with its own king (or kings) at a time when the Majapahit
Empire still held out against Muslim competitors, adding that plundering
raids were carried out from there.^15 The equally renowned Peregrinacão
of Fernão Mendes Pinto (d. 1583), a mixture of fact and fiction, alleges
that Bali was a pagan island dependent of the Islamic Demak Kingdom
- P. L. van Bloemen Waanders, “Aanteekeningen omtrent de zeden en gebruiken der
Balinezen, inzonderheid die van Boeleleng”, Tijdschrift van Indische Taal-, Land- en
Volkenkunde 8 (1859): 246–47. - Nineteenth-century Dutch reports described the king as responsible for declar-
ing wars and concluding peace, after deliberations with the chiefs of the kingdom
(Bloemen Waanders: 109). For a much-disputed view of late pre-colonial king-
ship, based on published Dutch sources and anthropological research, see Clifford
Geertz, Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth Century Bali (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1980). - C. C. Berg, De Middeljavaansche Historische Traditie (Santpoort: Mees, 1927).
- Armando Cortesão, The Suma Oriental of Tomé Pires (London: Hakluyt Society,
1944): 1.201–02.