The black stone and the golden kris

Beneath the cosmos there is magnetic Iron, From Chaos, through meditation, the world serpent Antaboga created the turtle Bedawang, the stabilizer on whom he coiled two serpents as the foundation of the world. On the world turtle there rests a lid, the Black Stone. There is no sun, nor moon, nor light in the cave below the stone, this is the underworld whose god is Kala.

Kala created the light and earth on which flows a layer of water. Above this are skies, high and low. One of mud, which dried to make the fields and mountains. Then the floating sky the clouds enthroning Semara, god of love. Beyond lies the dark blue sky with the sun and moon, palace of the sun god Surya. Then the perfumed sky, beautiful and full of rare flowers where live the awan snakes, the falling stars. Still higher, a flaming heaven of ancestors; and above all the skies, lives the divine guardians who keep watch over the heavenly nymphs.

The old manuscript, Catur Yoga, places Bali in the center of an ordered universe, as an island world testing on a turtle which floats on the ocean. If only the history of the island of the Black Stone retained the harmony of its genesis But the peace-loving settlers of Bali later met foreign powers with other ambitions. For a thousand years the chronicles relate alternating eras of peace and war.

Stone Age Bali remains virtually a blank. No remains of early humans and only a few stone tools have been found. For tens of thousands of year, small bands must have hunted the jungles gathered plants and what the tidal pools produced. Bali was well populated when the metal Age began around 300 B.C. People lived in villages and buried the dead in pottery jars or Stone sarcophagi together with bronze and iron implements and ornaments.

Of the beginnings of Indian influence in is known for certain. At the start an era, Bali probably formed part of the trading network linking the archipelago China . By the appearance of ions in the 9th century A.D the island's way of life was well defined

Wet rice agriculture, with highly developed irrigation, nourished Bali . Villagers also reared domestic animals, bred fighting cocks, and engaged in trades stone and woodcarving, canoe building, roof-thatching, and metalwork. The social setting of a Balinese of olden times committed him to two bonds: the one, determined by his descent, a genealogical bond, and the other, by his village, a territorial bond. Besides the authority of family and village, he was subject to a wider rule: the regional princedom, which when the first Balinese dynasties evolved, acknowledged the rule of a king.

The period when Hindu Java began to penetrate Balinese society was marked by the reign of King Airlangga (1019-1042) in East Java . When he was sixteen, the kingdom of Daha , ruled by his uncle Dharma Wangsa, was attacked and its sovereign killed. Airlangga fled to the forest where he lived among religious hermits. With their help he reconquered village after village until, in 1019, he was crowned king over his old kingdom and reigned as one of the greatest monarchs in the history of Java.

Airlangga's mother, Mahendradatta, moved to Bali shortly after his birth. She changed her name to Gunapriyadharmapatni and remarried a Balinese prince entitled Udayana. Queen Gunapriya and her consort ruled Bali from about 1000 to 1019 and were later succeeded by their two sons, who were half-brothers of Airlangga. Through this dynastic link, Javanese culture crossed the isthmus and enriched Bali . Royal edicts, first written in the common language of Bali at the time, were thereafter issued in the old Javanese language of Kawi. And the style of the cliff candis at Gunung Kawi, for example, was largely derived from East Javanes : architecture of the 11th century.

When Airlangga died in 1049, East Java was ruled by the Kediri dynasty. Bali , however, remained undisturbed and was governed by the descendants of Udayana. The semi autonomy of Bali did not end until the most powerful prince. Of the Javanese Singasari dynasty, Kertanagara, became king. In 1284 Kertanagara conquered Bali , but within eight................................

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