Authentic accounts of Hindu cultural presence in the South-East Asian region was first reported by Fa Hsien, the intrepid Chinese Buddhist Pilgrim. In 441 A.D., he had made a landfall in one of the islands when driven off course by a storm during his perilous return voyage from Sri Lanka to his home port in China. Fa Hsien has left behind for posterity a first hand account of the presence of brahminism in the island coexisting with Buddhism. The learned pilgrim who had spent decades in India studying Buddhist sanskrit manuscripts and all his compatriots who visited India during the same period have used the expression brahminism or Dewa-Worshipping instead of the popular modern term Hinduism.

Ever since that discovery, the inhabitants of the Isle of Bali have been identified as Hindus. By so doing, we are inadvertently comitting a grave injustice not to the Hindus alone but to the History of Man.

Here in the Isle of Bali, we can bear witness to the peaceful syncretism of Hinduism (Dewa-Worshipping) and Buddhism in their archaic form. Manjusri, the founder deity of Kirati Nepal is worshipped by the Balinese as the embodiment of the three supreme gods of Hindu pantheon, i.e., Brahma, Bisnu and Mahadeo. The Balinese also worship the Pancha Dhyani Buddha, Five Buddhas of Eternal Meditaion identified as Hindu gods, i.e., Vairochana as Sadasiwa, Amitabha as Mahadewa, Ratnasambhawa as Brahma, Amoghasiddha as Bisnu and Aksobhya as Rudra. Not only do the Balinese acknowledge Pancha Dhyani Buddha, they are aware that four of them face the cardinal directions while the fifth one is placed at the centre.

The significance of this discovery, that is to say, Manjusri, founder deity of Nepal and the Pancha Dhyani Buddha from Nepal who are totally unknown in Hindu India but are woshipped by the Balinese, leads an observer to believe that Kirati Nepal and the Isle of Bali share a common provenance.

The fact that Pali canons are unknown in the Isle of Bali establishes a simple fact that Bali Island had remained beyond the reach of Ashokan Missionaries. However, absence of brahminic caste system within Balinese community further narrows down our research to one single conclusion: that the Balinese are indeed that branch of the Kirati Mongolians who had migrated out of Kathmandu Valley eastward during the proto-historic Völkerwanderung(Barbarian Invasions).

Essentials of Kirati History
by Colonel G.L. Rai-Zimmdar