Cultural Village
The idea of balance is central to Balinese philosophy and way of life. Nature and man meet and complement each other orderly in a hymn of beauty addressed to Sang Hyang Widhi Wasa or God the Supreme.
Village Festival taken by R. HelmiThis is best visible in human landscapes. The villages are a study in order. If one walks across a village, every thirty meters or so, the eye will catch the same proud brick gate with the same lintel decoration. Hidden behind the same mud walls, there will be the same red tiles of the same family pavilions with, again thirty meters apart, the same thatched puppet houses: the family merajan (private shrine). Then, there will be a big tree, two slit logs hanging from its branches, with a couple of shrines under its shade and a nearby hall: the banjar (neighborhood) community hall. An atmosphere of calm, order and collective belonging prevails.
But the agricultural landscape is no less tame. When one reaches the limits of the dry land area of the village, a green and shining expanse on the horizon meets the eye. Narrow grassy dikes seem to be spread out like an endless carpet. In between lie shimmering paddy fields, connected to other gleaming paddy fields and watercourses to other watercourses, down to a line of coconut trees, and the next village, In the middle of the rice field, next to what looks like a path road, the eye catches the low walls and thatched shrines of a temple, next to a clump of bushes and trees. This is the subak temple, the temple of the irrigation association.
The basic Balinese territorial unit is the desa (village), whose surface covers both the wet land of the paddy fields, and the dry land of the compounds and related gardens, temples and roads. To the wet land, correspond the irrigation units or subak, and to the dry and inhabited land, the community wards or banjar, each with their temples and organizations.
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