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A virgin forest, lair of the ferocious Bali tiger and haunt of
highway robbers, stretching from rugged mountain chain to ragged
coast this was Jim bar Wana, the "Great Forest" of the
west, known today as Jembrana. More than half of the regency's 842
sq km area is forested, much of the rest is dry, and people from
other parts of Bali still consider Jembrana to be only half civilized
and not quite Balinese.
A Balinese chronicle accounts for the emptiness of Jembrana in
the following way: When the region first came under the author ity
of the court at Gelgel around 1450, two princes were sent to settle
the remote western forests. Gusti Ngurah Pecangakan settled near
present-day Negara; Gusti Ngurah Bakungan claimed the area around
present day Gilimanuk. Soon a rivalry developed between the two
as to who could develop the more beautiful and prosperous court.
On one occasion, Bakungan invited his brother to Gilimanuk to attend
a lavish court ceremony, and Pecangakan left his horse tied to a
tree where a pig had been slaughtered. The unguarded horse broke
free and ran home, first rolling in the grass and covering itself
in pig's blood. Seeing the horse return rider less and bloody, Pecangakan's
wife and family thought he had been killed, and as was the custom
they took their own lives to share his fate. Pecangakan returned
to a deserted palace and immediately declared war on his brother
out of grief and rage.
Whatever the truth of this tale, the two brothers destroyed each
other and their kingdoms in the civil war which ensued. All that
remains of them today is a small temple. Pura Bakungan, by the side
of the main road one km northeast of Cekek. And as a result, Jembrana
remained sparsely populated and barely civilized while the rest
of Bali blossomed with court culture. Eventually, a court of sorts
developed in the town of Jembrana, which in 1803 moved a few kms
west to the town of Negara, the present-day capital.
Who first settled the forbidding Jimbar Wana? The earlist evidence
of human habitation on Bali has in fact been discovered at Gilimanuk,
near the island's western tip. Not much is known about these prehistoric
people.
Later residents came not only from Bali but from other islands
also. The Bali Strait bordering Jembrana is notoriously treacherous,
and because the Balinese are wary of the sea anyway, parts of the
coast were settled by sailors, fishermen and merchants from Java,
Madura and Sulawesi. Many of these were Muslims and remained so.
One km south of the central market in Negara lies Loloan Timur,
a village of Muslim Balinese whose Bugis ancestors migrated here
as early as 1653. These villagers have retained elements of Buginese
culture, most strikingly the oblong houses built of wood with living
quarters on the second floor. Loloan Timur looks unlike any other
village on Bali.
Outside influences are thus very much in evidence here. There is
one mosque to every five Hindu temples in Jembrana. And Jembrana
residents themselves will tell you that prior to the 1920s, many
newcomers were people who were politically, economically or legally
in trouble in other parts of Indonesia. And after 1920, local transmigration
programs encouraged people from the more densely populated areas
of Bali to settle in Jembrana.
Most people in Jembrana can tell you where they are originally
from, and if you drive up one of the many side roads that snake
into the mountains, you will encounter places like Bangsal Gianyar
and Bangsal Bangli - entire communities transplanted to Jembrana
a generation ago. Some of them had religious motives for coming
here. Palasari and Belimbingsari in Melaya district, for example,
are the largest Catholic and Protestant communities on Bali. Palasari's
handsome Catholic church is the largest in eastern Indonesia.
The regency is today inhabited by only about 210,000 people, and
is the least densely populated area of Bali. At least eighty percent
make their living by farming, harvesting forest products, or fishing.
The Bali tiger was last sighted in the 1930s, and the remaining
wilds of Jimbar Wana have been incorporated into the Bali Barat
National Park. Jembrana today is a beautiful agricultural region,
with a unique history and character, reflected in the stories, customs
and arts of its people.
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