Balinese dance, music, painting, sculpture, and drama are well known around the globe. Unfortunately, Balinese traditional literature does not enjoy so much attention and admiration, known only to cultural researchers and of course by the Balinese.

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Bali possesses a rich and diverse literary heritage. Balinese traditional literature covers a wide variety of genres, ranging from folk tales and mythical stories in prose to epic poetry in different styles, from histories to dictionaries, from specialist manual to astronomical text, from magic formulae to moral treatises, from divination to agricultural practices from religious doctrine and philosophy to medicine.

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Past is something that cannot be separated from Balinese life. It penetrates deep into all aspect of Balinese everyday life. The position of a Balinese in his community, in socio-cultural life of the community, in religious activities in the temples is depend mainly on his past and point of origin.

The foremost researcher on Balinese socio-cultural life, Henk Schulte Nordholt in his work entitled “Origin, Descent, and Destruction: Text and Context in Balinese Representations of the past“, gives a better light on this account:

“Even today, many aspects of Balinese life are firmly rooted in the past. Whether it concerns religious concepts, temples, someone’s health or status, or political relationships, the truth about the order of things can only be found(ed) in the past. The Old-Javanese kakawin classics are in this respect “extremely true” because they are seen as the oldest texts in which an eternal truth is revealed that exists “beyond the realm of the senses.”

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