|
| |
| |
| |
Pari Penganten-The Wedding of the Rice.
One has but to turn one's back upon the towns built by foreigners on the malaria-stricken coast, and penetrate some little way into the interior of Java, to understand why its ancient inhabitants have given the country its name of ‘the Land of the Rice.’
The whole island is one vast ricefield. Rice on the swampy plains, rice on the rising ground, rice on the slopes, rice on the very summits of the hills. From the sod under one's feet to the verge of the horizon, everything has one and the same colour, the bluish-green of the young, or the gold of the ripened
| |
| |
rice. The natives are all, without exception, tillers of the soil, who reckon their lives by seasons of planting and reaping, whose happiness or misery is synonymous with the abundance or the dearth of the precious grain. And the great national feast is the harvest home, with its crowning ceremony of the Wedding of the Rice.
In order to proximately understand the meaning of this strange rite, it should be borne in mind that a Javanese, similar in this respect to the ancient Greek, believes all nature to be endued with a semi-divine life. To him a tree is not a mere vegetable, nor a rock a mere mass of stone, nor the sea a mere body of water, any more than he regards a human being as mere aggregate of flesh, blood, and bone. A hidden principle of life, invisible, imponderable, and powerful for good or evil animates the seemingly-inert matter. In this sense, a Javanese believes in the soul of a plant or rock almost as he believes in
| |
| |
the soul of a human being. And this soul he endeavours to propitiate with prayers. libations, and offerings of fruit and flowers. Hence, come the frequent altars under old waringin-trees, among whose branches the tutelary genius of the village, the Danhjang dessa, is believed to dwell; and the solemn sacrifices which the searchers after edible birds' nests offer to Njai Loro Kidoel, the maiden goddess of the southern seas, who has her shrine on the rocky south coast. Hence, too, arise the rites and ceremonies connected with the cultivation of the rice-plant, which they believe is animated by the soul of Dewi Sri, the Javanese Demeter. Of these ceremonies, this of the Wedding of the Rice is the most important. I will try to describe the way it is celebrated. As soon as the owner of a field sees his rice ripening, he goes to the dukun-sawah, literally the ‘medicine-man of the field,’ and consults him as to the day and hour when it will be meet to
| |
| |
begin the harvest. This, to a Javanese, is a most important matter, and one which it requires all the astrological, necromantie, and cabbalistic knowledge of the dukun-sawah to settle; for there are many unlucky days in the Javanese year, and any enterprise begun on such a day is doomed to inevitable failure. After long and intricate calculations, into which the cabbalistic values corresponding to the year, the month, the week the day, and the hour enter, an acceptable date is at last fixed upon by the dukun-sawah, on which the selection of the Rice-Bride and Bridegroom is to take place.
On the appointed day, having first solemnly consecrated that field by walking round it with a bundle of burning rice-straw in his hand, and by the planting of tall glagah-stalks at each of the four corners, invoking Dewi Sri as he does so - the dukun arrives, and begins to search for two stalks of rice exactly equal in length and thickness, and growing
| |
| |
near each other. When these are found, four more are hunted for, two pairs of absolutely similar ears of rice. The first couple are the Bridge and Bridgeroom; the four others the bridesmaids and the ‘best men,’ (if the term may be used to designate what the French call garcons d'honneur.) These couples are now tied together as they stand, with strips of palm leaves: and the dukun invokes on themthe blessing of Dewi Sri. Then he addresses the Rice-Bride and the Rice-Bridegroom, asking them, each in turn, whether they accept each other as husband and wife: and answering again. The marriage now is concluded: the stalks are smeared with the yellow boreh-unguent, which is made of flowers, decorated with garlands, and shaded from the sun by a tiny awning of palm leaves, whilst the stalks round about are cut off.
Now the dukun, the owner of the field and his family, and all those who
| |
| |
have in any way helped in preparing the ‘Sawah,’ or planting the rice, sit down to a ‘Slamettan,’ a repast which is, at the same time, a sacrifice to the gods, and a further celebration of the marriage just contracted, and, at the end of the banquet, the dukun, rising up, solemnly declares that the hour of the harvest has come.
Now, it is the kindly custom of Javanese land-owners to invite to the harvest-feast all who, during the past month, had taken any part, however slight, in the eultivation of the Sawah. And, as, under so elaborate a system of agriculture as is demanded by the growing of rice, these are necessarily many, the Pari Penganten is a feast for the whole ‘dessa’ as well as for a single family. The men leave their work in the shops or the market, the women lay down the sarong-eloth on which for weeks and weeks they have been patiently tracing elaborate patterns with wax, and blue, red, and brown pigment;
| |
| |
and all, in holiday attire and with flowers wreathed in their hair or stuck into a fold of their head-kerchief, repair to the ripe rice-field.
The dukun-sawah is the first to enter it; and, as he does so, he in this wise greets the spirits of the field:
‘Oh! thou invisible Pertijan Siluman! do not render vain the habour I have bestowed upon my sawah! If thou dost render it vain, I will hack thy head in two! Mother Sri Penganten! hearken! do thou assemble and call to thee all thy children and grandchildren! let them allbe present and let not one stay away! I wish to reap the rice. I will reap it with a piece of whetted iron. Be not afraid, tremble not, neither raise thine eyes! All my prayers implore thy favour and gracious protection. Also, I propose to prepare a sacrificial repast, and dedicate it to the spirit that protects this my sawah: and to the spirits that protect the four villages nearest
| |
| |
to this our village: and also to Leh-Saluke and Leh-Mukalana!’
Having pronounced this invocation, he cuts off the ears which represent the Rice-Bride and Bridegroom and their four companions: and the reapers begin their work. The implement they use is best described as a cross-hilted dagger of bamboo, having a little knife inserted into the bottom of the handle: the reaper, holding the hilt in the fingers of his right hand with the thumb, presses the rice-stalk against the small knife, thus severing the ear, which he gathers in this heft hand: and thus he cuts off each ripe ear separately with a gesture as delicate as if he were culling a flower. The whole rice-harvest of Java is reaped in this manner.
The loss of time may be imagined. And the Government has, again and again, tried to introduce the use of the sickle and more expeditious methods. But in vain. In all things, the Javanese love to do as their fathers did before
| |
| |
them: and, in this particular matter of the reaping of the rice, their attachment to ancestral customs is still further strengthened by a religious sentiment. The Dewi Sri herself, they believe, having assumed the shape of a gelatik or rice-bird, that broke off the ripe ears with its bill, taught mortals the manner in which it pleased her that her good gift, the rice, should be gathered. And, accordingly, her votaries to the present day do gather it thus, culling each ear separately. In their opinion, to use a sickle would be to show wanton disrespect to the goddess, and a contempt of the precious grain, as if it were not worth gathering in a seemly manner: a sacrilege which the outraged deity would not fail to punish with famine and pestilence. On the other hand, what would they gain by departing from their ancestors' honoured custom, and adopting in its stead the manners of the men from Holland? ‘Time,’
| |
| |
these men say. But then that means nothing to a Javanese. He no more wants to ‘gain time’ than he wants to ‘gain’ fresh air or sunlight. It is there: he has it, he will always have it: it seems absolutely absurd to talk of gaining it..... The idea of time as an equivalent for a certain amount - the greatest possible - of labour performed is essentially occidental. A Javanese not only does not understand it, but he shrugs his shoulders and smiles at the notion. He does not see what possible relation there can be between a day, and what these white men call a day's work. He works, undoubtedly, in a quiet, deliberate fashion - for just so long as he thinks pleasant, or fit, or, when the monsoon threatens his fields, necessary: and then he stops: and, if the task be not quite finished, well, it may be finished some future day. There is no cause why any ado should be made about it. Everything in time: and let us remember that
| |
| |
haste is of the evil one.
At last, however, the harvest is reaped: and the hour has come for the Rice-Bride and Bridegroom to repair to their new home. The two reapers, on whom the honourable office of conducting them thither devolves, don their very finest clothes for the occasion, and daub their faces with yellow boreh-unguent. Then to the strains of the gamelan, and followed by all the reapers, men and women, in solemn procession, they carry the garlanded sheaves to the house of the owner of the field. He and his wife meet them in the doorway; and, in answer to their question, inform them that the house is swept and garnished, and that all things are ready for the reception of the Rice-Bride and Bridegroom These are then taken to the granary, where a small space, surrounded by screens, and having a clean new mat upon the floor, represents the bridal chamber. The Bride and Bridegroom
| |
| |
and their ‘maids and youths of honour’ are introduced into this miniature room; the other sheaves are then brought into the ‘lumbung;’ (store-house) and when the entire harvest is stored, the dukun-sawah pronounces the prayer to the goddess Sri: ‘Mother, Sri Penganten; do thou sleep in this dark granary, and grant us thy protection. It is right that thou shouldst provide for all thy children and grandchildren.’
Then the door of the ‘lumbung’ is locked. And, during forty days, it may not be opened again. At the end of that time, the honeymoon of the Rice-Bride and Bridegroom is supposed to be over. The owner of the field comes to the granary, unlocks the door, and, in set phrase, invites the couple to an execusion upon the river, saying that the boat lies ready, and that the rowers know how to handle the oars. Taking the sheaves, he lays them in the hollowedout tree-trunk, which serves as a kind of mortar for husking the rice in: and
| |
| |
the women, briging down their long wooden pestles in a rhythmic cadence, pound the grain. And this is the end of the Wedding of the Rice.
|
|
Auteursrecht onbekend