It is the program of sponsorship by the puri that today draws together the diverse layers into what I have described as a network: a barong sponsored here, a temple restored there, a ceremony organised or an interpretation of the Rsi Markandeya story somewhere else. Some of these establish or reinforce direct links between villages and temples, all increase a sense of common ‘shelter under the umbrella (payung)’ of the puri.

This umbrella is, however, just one more image local people use to talk about an aspect (layer) of what I have been labouring to systematise into a network. What the puri are doing is systematising this same something but with an assurance that obviates any need to name it as such. Rather than a tangible network that can be plotted unambiguously on a map, what they are really working with is a set of ideas dispersed among a diverse corpus of practices and stories, a proto-theory of regional identity, a system of local knowledge integrated with the forms of ritual practice and narrative. It was the systematic nature of these ideas that people recognised when I spoke to them about my project and it is this basis of recognition also which provides the cultural material that the puri are recycling, developing and ordering.