BALINESE RELIGION. Eight degrees south of the equator, toward the middle of the belt of islands that form the southern arc of the Indonesian archipelago, lies the island of Bali, home of the last surviving Hindu-Buddhist civilization of Indonesia. A few kilometers to the west of Bali is the island of Java, where major Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms flourished from the time of Borobudur (eighth century) until the end of the sixteenth century, when the last Javanese Hindu kingdom fell to Islam. Just to the east of Bali is the Wallace Line, a deep ocean channel marking the biogeographical frontier between Asia and the Pacific. The Wallace Line is also a cultural frontier: journeying eastward from Bali, one leaves the zone of historical Asian civilizations and enters a region of tribal peoples. Bali is the last stepping-stone from Asia to the Pacific.

The preservation of Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms on...