At one time the island was populated by pure Indonesians, an ancient people who filed and blackened their teeth. They lived in small communities, family clans ruled by a council of Elders who acted as the priests of their religion. Their cult centered in the worship of the powerful spirits of nature, and especially those of their ancestors, with whom they continued to live, a great family of both the dead and the living. Occasionally, by means of mediums and sacrifices, they brought their ancestral spirits down to this earth to protect them. They buried their dead or simply abandoned them in the jungle to be carried away by the spirits, and it is possible that they even ate parts of the bodies in order to absorb the magic power inherent in their ancient headmen.

The pure descendants of these people, calling themselves Bali Aga or Bali Mula, the " original " Balinese, still live, isolated and independent, in the mountains where they found refuge from imperialistic strangers. Hidden in the bills of East Bali, near Karangasem, lies the village of Tenganan, where the most conservative of the Bali Aga preserve the old traditions with the greatest zeal. Tenganan is a rabidly isolated community, socially and economically separate from the rest of Bali, almost a republic in itself. It is shut off from the world by a solid wall that surrounds the entire village, which is meant to keep outsiders away, and is broken only by four gates, each facing one of the cardinal points. Of these gates, three open to the gardens and plantations of the village, but the main gate is so narrow that a stout person has difficulty in squeezing through. Such is the obsession for isolation in Tenganan that there is an official specially appointed to sweep the village after the visits of strangers, to obliterate their footprints.

The people of Tenganan are tall, slender, and aristocratic in a rather ghostly, decadent way, with light skins and refined manners. The majority of the men still wear their hair long. They are proud and look down even on the Hindu-Balinese nobility, who respect them and leave them alone. They live in a strange communistic or, rather, patriarchal-communalistic system in which individual ownership of property is not recognized and in which even the plans and measurements of the houses are set and alike for everybody.

There is Balinese which is descendents of Madjapahit troops who conquer bali in 1343 lead by General Gadja Mada for King Radjasanagara, under whom the entire Archipelago became a vassal of Madjapahit. During the next hundred years the power of the empire was undermined by civil wars and revolts in the colonies,. and soon the great empire went into decline. The Balinese revolted against Madjapahit time and again, but the uprisings were put down in memorable battles, after which military figures like Arya Damar and Gadjah Mada became rulers of Bali and to them the present Balinese aristocracy traces its origin, also the ancestor of nowdays Balinese modern people.

Ordinarily free of excessive clothing, the Balinese have small but well-developed bodies, with a peculiar anatomical structure of simple, solid masses reminiscent of Egyptian and Mycenaean sculptures: wide shoulders tapering down in unbroken lines to flexible waists and narrow hips; strong backs, small heads, and firm full breasts. Their slender arms and long legs end in delicate hands and feet, kept skilful and alive by functional use and dance training. Their faces have well-balanced - features, expressive The Beach in Sanur eyes, small noses, and full mouths, and their hair is thick and glossy. Because they are tanned by the sun, their golden-brown skin appears generally darker than it really is, and when seen at a distance, people bathing are considerably whiter around their middles, where the skin is usually covered by clothes, giving the impression that they wear light-coloured pants.

Their character is easy, courteous, and gentle, but they can be intense and can show strong temper if aroused. They are gay and witty; there is nothing that a Balinese loves more than a good joke, especially. if it is off-colour, and even children make ribald puns that are applauded by grown-ups. It is perhaps in their mad sense of humour, the spirit of Rabelaisian fun with which they handle even such forbidding subjects as religion and death, that lies the key to their character. The adjective " childish " or 11 childlike," so often misapplied to primitive peoples, does not suit the Balinese, because even the children show a sophistication often lacking in more civilized grown-ups. They are resourceful and intelligent, with acute senses and quick minds.

For those interested in knowing something of the racial origins of the Balinese, it may be added that they are by no means a pure race, but a complicated mixture of the native aborigines, with superimposed layers of higher cultures of various types.' The Balinese are descendants of a pure “Indonesian " race mixed with the Hindus of Central and East Java, who were them selves Indonesians of Hindu culture, with Indian and Chinese blood.

It was of extreme significance for the cultural development of Bali that in the exodus of the rulers, the priests, and the intellectuals of what was the most civilized race of the Eastern islands, the cream of Javanese culture was transplanted as a unit into Bali. There the art, the religion and philosophy of the Hindu Javanese were preserved and- have flourished practically undisturbed until today.