From the 10th to the 12th centuries, the Balinese Warmadewa family established a dynastic link with Java. Court decrees were thereafter issued in the Old Javanese language of Kawi and Balinese sculpture, bronzes, and other artistic styles, bathing places, and rock-out temples began to resemble those in East Java. The Sanur pillar (A.D. 914), partly written in Sankrit, supports the theory that portions of the island were already Indianized in the 10th century.

Bali’s way of life was well defined by the early part of the 10th century. By then, the Balinese were engaged in sophisticated wet-rice cultivation, livestock breeding, stone and woodcarving metalworking, roof thatching, canoe building, even cockfighting. The Balinese of the time were locked into feudal genealogical and territorial bondage.

They were subjects of an autocratic Hinduized ruler – one of a number of regional Balinese princes, who himself acknowleged the sovereignty of a Javanese overlord.