Bali, four hundred years of journey

Bali, four hundred years of journey

Traveling To Bali: Four Hundred Years of Journeys
Compiled and introduced by Adrian Vickers
Published by Oxford University Press, New York, 1994
278 pages

DENPASAR (JP): Tourists: "They have a lot of money, yes, but
they know nothing about gods, they can't dance or play music,
except for they own sort of radios, they don't understand rice
and many of them don't even eat rice."

This quotation -- from Diana Darling, an Australian -- can be
considered an outsider's perception of local discourse. It comes
from an anthology of 40 pieces entitled Traveling to Bali, four
hundred years of journeys.

The compiler is Adrian Vickers, a historian from the
University of Wollongong, Australia, whose previous important
book Bali, Paradise Created (Penguin, 1989) has been widely
discussed for its provocatively well-researched historical
analyses. In the previous book, Adrian suggested that the idea of
Bali as a "paradise island" was a political construction of the
colonial occupation which then became a post-colonial tourist
attraction.

Adrian's recent anthology consists of forty articles. Each
writer describes one or more encounters with Bali and its people.
The oldest piece was written in 1597 by Aernoudt Lintgenszoon, a
Dutchman. The other pieces are the effusive outpourings of 1920s
travelers to 'paradise' and the reflections of Balinese writers
on what was happening to their island in the 1970s and 1980s. The
cultural backgrounds of the writers are various: Belgian,
British, French, German, Javanese, Mexican, Thai and so on. Two
Balinese whose works are included in the book are Putu Satria and
Nyoman S. Pendit, both of whom have spent time in Java.

Vickers seems to believe that recent writers, tourists and the
Balinese people themselves owe a debt to the hordes of writers on
Bali who have come before. Descriptions, explanations and reports
on Bali are always linked to the expectations, aims or interests
of other writers and the images of the Bali they want to create.
As Vickers says, the 'truth' about Bali is second-hand (page XV).
Sometimes that it obvious in the writing itself. Sometimes, it is
a not at all apparent to the reader, however. Speculation about
what has 'influenced' each writer is one of the attractions of
this book.

"In choosing the various works I have used a number of
criteria, the first being my own tastes and interests. Since
these are usually the result of earlier academic attempts to
discover how others have known Bali," Vickers says in the
introduction.

Writing aims to alter the reader's consciousness. Vickers'
awareness of the connection between the truth and that aim is
expressed in his question in the introduction: "How do we know
that any of the writers were telling 'the truth' about Bali to
their readers, or telling it all of the time?" (page XIV).

The important part of this anthology are the notes provided on
each writer. These serve to enhance the reader's imagination.
Take Vickers' notes on H.A. Van den Broek (A Less than Respectful
Encounter; page 45): "He was sent by Raffles who had
reestablished European interest in the island. Van den Broek was
sent to follow up on that interest, particularly with a view
towards making treaties with the various kings -- the usual
prelude to a military take-over."

Another good example are Vickers' sympathetic noes on Raden
Sasrawijaya (A Javanese Journey, page 9-13): "He was a lower-
ranking aristocrat from the Sultanate of Yogyakarta," and was
"religiously educated". Vickers explains that this writer's
account of his journey in 1871 shows that a devout Muslim or
santri did not have any great qualms about Bali's Hinduism.
Instead, the word Sasrawijaya used to describe his travels was
nyantri, which means "to go on a journey which helps one become a
better Muslim". Sasrawijaya was interested in a journey of inner
knowledge and saw "no incongruity in an adherent of Islam
traveling to a non-Islamic island in order to further his own
spiritual knowledge".

This kind of background information, important for the general
reader, makes this anthology the most well-selected of its kind.

-- Benito Lopulalan