Puputan is a Balinese term for a mass ritual suicide in preference to facing the humiliation of surrender. It originally seems to have meant a last desperate attack against a numerically superior enemy.[1] Notable puputans in the history of Bali occurred in 1906 and 1908, when the Balinese were being subjugated by the Dutch.
- ^ Pringle 2004, p. 106: "The Balinese term puputan comes from the root puput, meaning 'finishing' or 'ending'. Western accounts frequently suggest that the puputan were stimulated by opium use and/or by a cultural affinity for spontaneous violence, the tradition of amok (an Indonesian word) found throughout the Malay world, from which the English expression 'running amuck' is derived. But not all puputan were the same. They were not all staged against colonial armies. There are several recorded instances of Balinese forces resorting to them against other Balinese, as in the case of the Lombok civil war of 1839. Nor were all puputan suicidal. The original meaning seems to have been a last desperate attack against a numerically superior enemy. In at least one conflict between Balinese antagonists, a puputan succeeded, resulting in victory for those who launched it."