Story Of Bali, Indonesia

Thus statues were carved with accentuated genitals, excessively large heads, andso forth. This 'fixation' is sometimes so marked that the statue can hardly be recognized airy longer as that of a human figure. There are statues in which the demonic spirit is expressed at times with startling realism (protective sculptures); there are others which give expression, to certain abstract tendencies and aspirations (ancestor sculptures).

Amongst the Dayaks, for example, one finds the so-called hampatongs - figures designed to give protection against evil influences - roughly hewn piles which no longer bear any resemblance to a human figure, and also statues with an intensely dynamic force expressed in an almost surrealistic style.

The ancestor sculptures on Nias Island occupy a special position. The stylized head-dress, the small beard 'stuck on' and the right ears with distended lobes, are certainly strange in detail, but the general impression is one of a sublime composure which enhances their value. In the case of ancestor sculptures carved in simpler fashion by tribes in tile South Moluccas - almost all of which arc shown seated, with the arms crossed and resting upon the knees - the expression conveyed of serene poise is often moving, and in keeping with the sacral function of these sculptures. The statues from Let a small island in the South Moluccas - are unique in shape

When Islam spread from Madinat an-Nabi in Arabia via the Middle East to Further India, it was already thoroughly imbued with Oriental mysticism and had thus lost much of its original rigid orthodoxy. The Indonesians, so susceptible to mysticism, found many points of spiritual contact with the new religion in the form in which it was introduced by the Gujaratis, once it had undergone this modification in the direction of mysticism. Thus reception of the new religion was appreciably facilitated, but at the same time this allowed alien elements to creep in unobserved.

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