Preface

219
work, in what way an ostensibly narrative statement should be – let alone in
fact has been – understood. Ricoeur at least attempts to include readers or
spectators (1984: 46), but his model of the text and its production as central
(1979) make them an afterthought in the hermeneutic circle. Herein lies the
rub. Classifications of narratives may appear clear-cut. But this is
achieved at the expense of considering the purposes of speakers or narrators
and how they are understood by their audiences. Narrative easily becomes
an essence, a total phenomenon and a transcendental agent, which replaces
the complex or human agents who wrote the account and do the narrating,
listening and understanding.
This may, I hope, make it clearer what sort of history
anthropologists like Geertz and Boon have in mind. We know precious
little about the circumstances and consequences of the reading of historical
works in Bali as situated social acts, or even how they are understood by
audiences. Nor does it matter for analyses of this kind. For instance,
serious problems about the ownership of a temple in Tengahpadang, led in
late 1979 to the reading of a short section of the Babad Dalem Sukawati (a
work belonging to a local aristocratic lineage) to see if it could throw light
on the matter (see Hobart 1990b for details). Commentaries on the reading
by different interested participants are fascinating, because they bear very
little relationship to any received wisdom about what such works are all
about. 178 A problem arises: which is the narrative? Is it the script
extrapolated for the purpose from one version of the babad itself? Is it the
‘translation’ on that occasion from kawi (Old Javanese) into Balinese? Is it
what the audience understood by the reading? To the extent it is this last,
as there were different understandings by rival interest groups, which
version are we to take? Had there been public debate afterwards, there
would be a case for taking the version which prevailed as the definitive
narrative, until such time as it was superseded. However, there was no
such public discussion (Hobart 1990b: 110-14). Even this broadening of
the field may be inadequate though. Most of the original owners of the
temple were excluded from the proceedings. What of their understanding
of the babad?
A short excerpt from the babad illustrates some of the problems of
defining the essence of narrative. At one point the reading told of Cokorda
(Ida Déwagung) Gedé Karang, who had settled in Padangtegal, some eight
kilometres from Tengahpadang. It went something like:
178 I have over twenty hours of commentaries on tape and I hope in due course to have an
opportunity to write at some length about the reading and different commentaries.