Banjar, Bali

Banjar is a small town on the coastal plain in North Bali. It was the seat of a semi-independent kingdom in the 19th century. The kingdom was ruled by a Brahman class who were literary scholars. In 1871, the ruling family of Banjar put up a fierce resistance to Dutch rule. It resulted in one of the first recorded puputan, or fight to the last, in Bali.

Among the sights in Banjar today is a Buddhist monastery known as Brahma Vihara Ashrama. It was founded by a local brahman, Bhikku Giri Rakhita, in 1970. The brahman had converted to Thai-style Theravada Buddhism, and introduced this form of Buddhism to Banjar with the monastery.

Another sight in Banjar is the hot spring, Air Panas, a local picnic spot for the locals. The sulphurous water of the hot spring spurts out of eight dragon heads into ponds. Considered sacred, the hot spring has its own temple built around it.

10 km from Banjar is the remote Bali Aga village of Pedawa. Just as the Balinese resisted Dutch rule, so did the Bali Aga resisted Javanese occupation, retaining their own Hindu beliefs which predates the form of Hinduism brought in later. As a result, the Hindu shrine of the Bali Aga is different from those of mainstream Balinese.

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Hello and thanks for reading this page. My name is Timothy and my hobby is in describing places so that I can share the information with the general public. My website has become the go to site for a lot of people including students, teachers, journalists, etc. whenever they seek information on places, particularly those in Malaysia and Singapore. I have been doing this since 5 January 2003, for over twenty years already. You can read about me at Discover Timothy. By now I have compiled information on thousands of places, mostly in Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore, and I continue to add more almost every day. My goal is to describe every street in every town in Malaysia and Singapore.

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