Story of Bali, Indonesia

There follows a demonic quartette of sound and movement, as they swirl over the stage in fierce spurts of rhythm and roar at each other with inarticulate savage sounds very far removed from the delicate tones of the aloes group who sit facing them, out of action. Ravana orders Marica, to transform himself into a deer, and he joins the aloes group. Excitement swells in the gamelan as the rakshasas are hurled about in a tempest of unearthly passion and clumsy humor, the comedy lying in Delem and Sangoet's evident fear of their master, combined with a desire to approach him.

In raucous voices they incite each other, and Delem at last, while embracing Ravana's knees, irreverently lifts him high in the air, an audacity equally diverting to actors and audience. The low characters always have a very sketchy idea of how the lofty should be treated, and their clumsy antics and untoward familiarity are a chief source of mirth. Indeed the scene is prolonged entirely for its comic relief, which is rare in Wajang Wong; a fact which accounts for its relatively small popularity amongst the Balinese. In Wajang Koelit, as we have seen, the knock-about between the servants plays an enormously important part, and provides some of the most attractive passages, too often however swamping the romantic and heroic action.

On Sumatra small Islamic states developed, of which Samudra on the north-east coast already exercised appreciable influence by the year 1300. Under the pressure of these small states the kingdom of Malayu, which still adhered to its Indian culture, withdrew to the district of Menangkabau in the interior of central Sumatra. The close contact with Gujarat is evident from the fact that the grave store on the tomb of the founder of the kingdom of Samudra came from Cambay, the capital of Gujarat. In the latter half of the 14th century the Mohammedan principality of Pasei, also situated on the north-eastern coast of Sumatra, exercised hegemony in the area, but already by the begi-aning of the 15th century authority passed to the kingdom of Malacca, another Mohammedan state, which extended its control over almost the whole of Sumatra.

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