Textiles represent powerful symbols in Bali, indicating the status and well being of the wearer. Even buildings, trees and statues have textiles draped and attached to them, because they are by tradition symbolically dressed during ceremonies. Textiles could also assist as mediators with the supernatural world in religious rituals such as cremations, where hundreds of costly meters of cloth would be turned into ashes to accompany the soul of the dead to the other world. As merchants brought the first materials to Bali, they used textiles as a primary medium of exchange in trade at ports. Textiles would have been used as offerings to the gods, later being used as compulsory attire for temples.
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