The Balinese Residential compound is home to an extended family typically consisting of a married couple, their married sons with their wives and children, their unmarried daughters, and, if still alive, the parents of the husband. In the case of low-caste families, however, the property usually passes to the last-born son and non-inheriting sons will either build their own house compound or move in with their wives. If a group of brothers decides to say together, each brother will have own living quarters within the compound with its own kitchen facilities.
A hierarchy of Levels
The level inside the compound is generally a little higher than that of the street outside. This serves both a practical and a symbolic function. On the one hand it makes it easier to provide drainage for the compound simply by creating conduits that empty into a ditch running on either side of the road. On the other hand the superior elevation is part of a hierarchical ordering of space that runs from the street to the family temple situated in the kaja-kangin corner of the compound. The latter is the highest point in the compound, reflecting its status as sacred ground.
The Family Temple
The family temple (sanggah) is set off from the rest of the compound by a low wall and provides a sacred enclosure (pemerajan) for the family shrines. The relative dimensions of the wallet - off space are governed by ritual prescriptions similar to those that regulate the shape and size of the compound as a whole. Different dimension have different significances. For example, the gods are said to favour a family whose sanggah enclosure is only one unit longer than it is wide; even higher esteem is attached to those whose place of worship differs by two the differs by two units, and great purity where the difference is one of five units. These distributions are not always positive: marriage to an unfaithful wife may be the fate of those where the difference between length and width is eight units.
The location of the entrance to the sanggah enclosure is also important and should ideally be placed between the sleeping pavilion (umah meten) of the family head and the bale kangin, the pavilion occupying the eastern side of the central court. A north-facing entrance is considered to be particularly inauspicious.
Gods and Ancestors
The family temple contains a number of different shrines, dedicated to both the gods and family ancestors. The most prominent is the sanggah kamulan, a small, wooden, houselike construction raised on pillars and standing on a sandstone or brick column. This structure is divided into three compartments, dedicated to the Hindu triumvirate (trimurti) of Brahma, Siwa and Vishnu. Brahma is associated with male ancestors of the household, while Vishnu is identified with the female. Ideally, a Balinese man should build one of these shrines when he marries.
The sanggah kamulan stands in the kaja-kangin corner of the temple enclosure, together with other ritual structures dedicated to Mother Earth (Ibu Pertiwi) and sacred mountains, Mt Agung and Mt Batur. The rice goddess, Sri, shares a shrine (panegtegan) with the deities of wealth and knowledge, Rambut Sedana and Saraswati, respectively. There many also be an altar dedicated to the sun god, Surya.
Other ritual structures can also be located in the kaja-kangin corner pf the temple enclosure, dedicated to one or more of several different gods and goddesses. These structures vary according to the status of the head of the family. There will also be a number of brick and sandstone columns around the compound where offerings can be placed for the spirits who guard the home and its occupants.
Sleeping, Eating and Bathing
The Balinese compound appears to lack what Western visitors would recognize as adequate provision for sleeping, eating and bathing. The head of the family sleeps in the most prestigious pavilion in the compound, the umah meten, which he inherits from his parents when they die. This is situated along the kaja wall of the central courtyard, which not only reflects the status of the family head but also identifies his position as closet to the ancestors.
Children and their mother tend to sleep in the bale sakepat but other family members sleep wherever they choose –typically in one of the open-sided pavilions around the central courtyard (natar) or the platform beneath the rice granary.
There are seldom any bathing facilities within the compound, though piped water has altered the situation in recent years, and people take their bath in rivers, water conduits and specially constructed village bathing pools.
