ABSTRACT
Religions were born of man’s desire to understand and control the mysterious process of nature. Fear of the eerie, unseen forces that cause birth, reproduction, and death, awe before the power of fire, wind, and water, made him worship the elements of the teeming world in which he lived. The conglomerate of religious principles manifests itself in elaborate cults of ancestors and deities of fertility, of fire, water, earth, and sun, of the mountains and the sea, of gods and devils. They are the backbone of the Balinese religion, which is generally referred to as Hinduism, but which is in reality too close to the earth, too animistic, to be taken as the same esoteric religion as that of the Hindus of India. The temple is certainly the most important institution on the island and the clearest illustration of the spirit of the Balinese religion.
