All of the outward show is related to the key feature of an odalan, which
is bringing the gods down to the temple. The priest (or priests) of the tem-
ple (pemangku) and one or more high priests (pedanda) offer Sanskrit-based
prayers. Belo (1966 [1953a], pp. 29, 4648) records the words of the
prayers. All of the gods are invited to the party. They come from the East,
the South, the West, and the North. In the center the highest god sits on a
throne. That god has various names. In the village Belo studied the highest
god is calledIda Guru Dewa. Heavenly angels or “nymphs” (widiadaroand
widiadari) are also invited to come to the gathering. To some extent Jane
Belo relies on the famous Indologist Stutterheim (1930) and other
Sanskritists. There is a great deal more detail found in Belo’s excellent, tra-
ditional ethnographic account and it is very useful to consult the old
Dutch-language sources about Bali in general (e.g., Liefrinck, 1877;
Stutterheim, 1930). Bali cannot be understood historically without refer-
ence to the Javanese (Pemberton, 1994). But this is not the place to launch
into a general discussion of the Javanese and Balinese Medieval, precolo-
nial states and Buddhist as well as Hindu religious background (Hooykaas,
1964 ; Korn, 1932). To some extent any discussion of the historical back-
ground even of the nineteenth century must rely on conjecture (Geertz,
1965, 1966, 1980). The “imagined community” (Anderson, 2006) of Bali
(Vickers, 1973), like the imagined community of Java (Pemberton, 1994),
Massachusetts (Philbrick, 2006) all members of the Church of Latter Day
Saints (Jacobson & Burton, 2011) or any other group, organization, institu-
tion, or nation, is a subject that goes far beyond any kind of ethnography
or even Symbolic Interactionist fieldwork. Ultimately, in the 21st century,
the global context also has to be added to the more comprehensive under-
standing of what is going on in any place at any specific time. But at the
very least it is important to try to be as truthful as possible about what we
actually observe and what kind of thick description we are actually able to
carry out.
HOW TO LIE WITH ETHNOGRAPHIC FIELDNOTES
When we write up our research we can present the material in many differ-
ent ways. It is relatively easy to pretend to really “know” more than we
actually know on the basis of first-hand experience and ethnographic “thick
description.” Moreover, we can fudge the ways in which we learned what
we learned. One aspect of lying is avoidance of sensitive topics. For
Geertz’s “Thick Description” and a Balinese Temple Ritual 97