Section 2. The Rice-mother in the East Indies.
IF THE READER still feels any doubts as to the meaning of the
harvest customs which have been practised within living memory
by European peasants, these doubts may perhaps be dispelled by
comparing the customs observed at the rice-harvest by the
Malays and Dyaks of the East Indies. For these Eastern peoples
have not, like our peasantry, advanced beyond the intellectual
stage at which the customs originated; their theory and their
practice are still in unison; for them the quaint rites which in
Europe have long dwindled into mere fossils, the pastime of
clowns and the puzzle of the learned, are still living realities of
which they can render an intelligible and truthful account. Hence
a study of their beliefs and usages concerning the rice may throw
some light on the true meaning of the ritual of the corn in ancient
Greece and modern Europe. 1
Now the whole of the ritual which the Malays and Dyaks
observe in connexion with the rice is founded on the simple
conception of the rice as animated by a soul like that which these
people attribute to mankind. They explain the phenomena of
reproduction, growth, decay, and death in the rice on the same
principles on which they explain the corresponding phenomena in
human beings. They imagine that in the fibres of the plant, as in
the body of a man, there is a certain vital element, which is so far
independent of the plant that it may for a time be completely
separated from it without fatal effects, though if its absence be
prolonged beyond certain limits the plant will wither and die. This
vital yet separable element is what, for the want of a better word,
we must call the soul of a plant, just as a similar vital and
separable element is commonly supposed to constitute the soul of
man; and on this theory or myth of the plant-soul is built the whole
worship of the cereals, just as on the theory or myth of the human
soul is built the whole worship of the dead,-a towering
superstructure reared on a slender and precarious foundation. 2
Believing the rice to be animated by a soul like that of a man, the
Indonesians naturally treat it with the deference and the
consideration which they show to their fellows. Thus they behave
towards the rice in bloom as they behave towards a pregnant
woman; they abstain from firing guns or making loud noises in the
field, lest they should so frighten the soul of the rice that it would
miscarry and bear no grain; and for the same reason they will not
talk of corpses or demons in the rice-fields. Moreover, they feed
the blooming rice with foods of various kinds which are believed
to be wholesome for women with child; but when the rice-ears are
just beginning to form, they are looked upon as infants, and
women go through the fields feeding them with rice-pap as if they
were human babes. In such natural and obvious comparisons of
the breeding plant to a breeding woman, and of the young grain to
a young child, is to be sought the origin of the kindred Greek
conception of the Corn-mother and the Corn-daughter, Demeter
and Persephone. But if the timorous feminine soul of the rice can
be frightened into a miscarriage even by loud noises, it is easy to
imagine what her feelings must be at harvest, when people are
under the sad necessity of cutting down the rice with the knife. At
so critical a season every precaution must be used to render the
necessary surgical operation of reaping as inconspicuous and as
painless as possible. For that reason the reaping of the seed-rice
is done with knives of a peculiar pattern, such that the blades are
hidden in the reapers' hands and do not frighten the rice-spirit till
the very last moment, when her head is swept off almost before
she is aware; and from a like delicate motive the reapers at work
in the fields employ a special form of speech, which the rice-spirit
cannot be expected to understand, so that she has no warning or
inkling of what is going forward till the heads of rice are safely
deposited in the basket. 3
Among the Indonesian peoples who thus personify the rice we
may take the Kayans or Bahaus of Central Borneo as typical. In
order to secure and detain the volatile soul of the rice the Kayans
resort to a number of devices. Among the instruments employed for
this purpose are a miniature ladder, a spatula, and a basket
containing hooks, thorns, and cords. With the spatula the priestess
strokes the soul of the rice down the little ladder into the basket,
where it is naturally held fast by the hooks, the thorn, and the
cord; and having thus captured and imprisoned the soul she
conveys it into the rice-granary. Sometimes a bamboo box and a
net are used for the same purpose. And in order to ensure a good
harvest for the following year it is necessary not only to detain the
soul of all the grains of rice which are safely stored in the granary,
but also to attract and recover the soul of all the rice that has
been lost through falling to the earth or being eaten by deer, apes,
and pigs. For this purpose instruments of various sorts have been
invented by the priests. One, for example, is a bamboo vessel
provided with four hooks made from the wood of a fruit-tree, by
means of which the absent rice-soul may be hooked and drawn
back into the vessel, which is then hung up in the house.
Sometimes two hands carved out of the wood of a fruit-tree are
used for the same purpose. And every time that a Kayan
housewife fetches rice from the granary for the use of her
household, she must propitiate the souls of the rice in the granary,
lest they should be angry at being robbed of their substance. 4
The same need of securing the soul of the rice, if the crop is to
thrive, is keenly felt by the Karens of Burma. When a rice-field
does not flourish, they suppose that the soul (kelah) of the rice is
in some way detained from the rice. If the soul cannot be called
back, the crop will fail. The following formula is used in recalling
the kelah (soul) of the rice: "O come, rice-kelah, come! Come to
the field. Come to the rice. With seed of each gender, come. Come
from the river Kho, come from the river Kaw; from the place where
they meet, come. Come from the West, come from the East. From
the throat of the bird, from the maw of the ape, from the throat of
the elephant. Come from the sources of rivers and their mouths.
Come from the country of the Shan and Burman. From the distant
kingdoms come. From all granaries come. O rice-kelah, come to
the rice." 5
The Corn-mother of our European peasants has her match in the
Rice-mother of the Minangkabauers of Sumatra. The
Minangkabauers definitely attribute a soul to rice, and will
sometimes assert that rice pounded in the usual way tastes better
than rice ground in a mill, because in the mill the body of the rice
was so bruised and battered that the soul has fled from it. Like the
Javanese they think that the rice is under the special
guardianship of a female spirit called Saning Sari, who is
conceived as so closely knit up with the plant that the rice often
goes by her name, as with the Romans the corn might be called
Ceres. In particular Saning Sari is represented by certain stalks or
grains called indoea padi, that is, literally, "Mother of Rice," a
name that is often given to the guardian spirit herself. This
so-called Mother of Rice is the occasion of a number of
ceremonies observed at the planting and harvesting of the rice as
well as during its preservation in the barn. When the seed of the
rice is about to be sown in the nursery or bedding-out ground,
where under the wet system of cultivation it is regularly allowed to
sprout before being transplanted to the fields, the best grains are
picked out to form the Rice-mother. These are then sown in the
middle of the bed, and the common seed is planted round about
them. The state of the Rice-mother is supposed to exert the
greatest influence on the growth of the rice; if she droops or pines
away, the harvest will be bad in consequence. The woman who
sows the Rice-mother in the nursery lets her hair hang loose and
afterwards bathes, as a means of ensuring an abundant harvest.
When the time comes to transplant the rice from the nursery to the
field, the Rice-mother receives a special place either in the
middle or in a corner of the field, and a prayer or charm is uttered
as follows: "Saning Sari, may a measure of rice come from a stalk
of rice and a basketful from a root; may you be frightened neither
by lightning nor by passers-by! Sunshine make you glad; with the
storm may you be at peace; and may rain serve to wash your
face!" While the rice is growing, the particular plant which was
thus treated as the Rice-mother is lost sight of; but before harvest
another Rice-mother is found. When the crop is ripe for cutting,
the oldest woman of the family or a sorcerer goes out to look for
her. The first stalks seen to bend under a passing breeze are the
Rice-mother, and they are tied together but not cut until the
first-fruits of the field have been carried home to serve as a festal
meal for the family and their friends, nay even for the domestic
animals; since it is Saning Sari's pleasure that the beasts also
should partake of her good gifts. After the meal has been eaten,
the Rice-mother is fetched home by persons in gay attire, who
carry her very carefully under an umbrella in a neatly worked bag
to the barn, where a place in the middle is assigned to her. Every
one believes that she takes care of the rice in the barn and even
multiplies it not uncommonly. 6
When the Tomori of Central Celebes are about to plant the rice,
they bury in the field some betel as an offering to the spirits who
cause the rice to grow. The rice that is planted round this spot is
the last to be reaped at harvest. At the commencement of the
reaping the stalks of this patch of rice are tied together into a
sheaf, which is called "the Mother of the Rice" (ineno pae), and
offerings in the shape of rice, fowl's liver, eggs, and other things
are laid down before it. When all the rest of the rice in the field has
been reaped, "the Mother of the Rice" is cut down and carried
with due honour to the rice-barn, where it is laid on the floor, and
all the other sheaves are piled upon it. The Tomori, we are told,
regard the Mother of the Rice as a special offering made to the
rice-spirit Omonga, who dwells in the moon. If that spirit is not
treated with proper respect, for example if the people who fetch
rice from the barn are not decently clad, he is angry and punishes
the offenders by eating up twice as much rice in the barn as they
have taken out of it; some people have heard him smacking his
lips in the barn, as he devoured the rice. On the other hand the
Toradjas of Central Celebes, who also practice the custom of the
Rice-mother at harvest, regard her as the actual mother of the
whole harvest, and therefore keep her carefully, lest in her
absence the garnered store of rice should all melt away and
disappear. 7
Again, just as in Scotland the old and the young spirit of the
corn are represented as an Old Wife (Cailleach) and a Maiden
respectively, so in the Malay Peninsula we find both the
Rice-mother and her child represented by different sheaves or
bundles of ears on the harvest-field. The ceremony of cutting and
bringing home the Soul of the Rice was witnessed by Mr. W. W.
Skeat at Chodoi in Selangor on the twenty-eighth of January
1897. The particular bunch or sheaf which was to serve as the
Mother of the Rice-soul had previously been sought and
identified by means of the markings or shape of the ears. From this
sheaf an aged sorceress, with much solemnity, cut a little bundle
of seven ears, anointed them with oil, tied them round with
parti-coloured thread, fumigated them with incense, and having
wrapt them in a white cloth deposited them in a little oval-shaped
basket. These seven ears were the infant Soul of the Rice and the
little basket was its cradle. It was carried home to the farmer's
house by another woman, who held up an umbrella to screen the
tender infant from the hot rays of the sun. Arrived at the house the
Rice-child was welcomed by the women of the family, and laid,
cradle and all, on a new sleepingmat with pillows at the head.
After that the farmer's wife was instructed to observe certain rules
of taboo for three days, the rules being in many respects identical
with those which have to be observed for three days after the birth
of a real child. Something of the same tender care which is thus
bestowed on the newly-born Rice-child is naturally extended
also to its parent, the sheaf from whose body it was taken. This
sheaf, which remains standing in the field after the Rice-soul has
been carried home and put to bed, is treated as a newly-made
mother; that is to say, young shoots of trees are pounded together
and scattered broadcast every evening for three successive days,
and when the three days are up you take the pulp of a coco-nut
and what are called "goat-flowers," mix them up, eat them with a
little sugar, and spit some of the mixture out among the rice. So
after a real birth the young shoots of the jack-fruit, the
rose-apple, certain kinds of banana, and the thin pulp of young
coco-nuts are mixed with dried fish, salt, acid, prawn-condiment,
and the like dainties to form a sort of salad, which is administered
to mother and child for three successive days. The last sheaf is
reaped by the farmer's wife, who carries it back to the house,
where it is threshed and mixed with the Rice-soul. The farmer then
takes the Rice-soul and its basket and deposits it, together with
the product of the last sheaf, in the big circular rice-bin used by
the Malays. Some grains from the Rice-soul are mixed with the
seed which is to be sown in the following year. In this
Rice-mother and Rice-child of the Malay Peninsula we may see
the counterpart and in a sense the prototype of the Demeter and
Persephone of ancient Greece. 8
Once more, the European custom of representing the corn-spirit
in the double form of bride and bridegroom has its parallel in a
ceremony observed at the rice-harvest in Java. Before the
reapers begin to cut the rice, the priest or sorcerer picks out a
number of ears of rice, which are tied together, smeared with
ointment, and adorned with flowers. Thus decked out, the ears are
called the padi-pěngant, that is, the Rice-bride and the
Rice-bridegroom; their wedding feast is celebrated, and the
cutting of the rice begins immediately afterwards. Later on, when
the rice is being got in, a bridal chamber is partitioned off in the
barn, and furnished with a new mat, a lamp, and all kinds of toilet
articles. Sheaves of rice, to represent the wedding guests, are
placed beside the Rice-bride and the Rice-bridegroom. Not till
this has been done may the whole harvest be housed in the barn.
And for the first forty days after the rice has been housed, no one
may enter the barn, for fear of disturbing the newly-wedded
pair. 9
In the islands of Bali and Lombok, when the time of harvest has
come, the owner of the field himself makes a beginning by cutting
"the principal rice" with his own hands and binding it into two
sheaves, each composed of one hundred and eight stalks with
their leaves attached to them. One of the sheaves represents a
man and the other a woman, and they are called "husband and
wife." The male sheaf is wound about with thread so that none of
the leaves are visible, whereas the female sheaf has its leaves
bent over and tied so as to resemble the roll of a woman's hair.
Sometimes, for further distinction, a necklace of rice-straw is tied
round the female sheaf. When the rice is brought home from the
field, the two sheaves representing the husband and wife are
carried by a woman on her head, and are the last of all to be
deposited in the barn. There they are laid to rest on a small
erection or on a cushion of rice-straw. The whole arrangement,
we are informed, has for its object to induce the rice to increase
and multiply in the granary, so that the owner may get more out of
it than he put in. Hence when the people of Bali bring the two
sheaves, the husband and wife, into the barn, they say, "Increase
ye and multiply without ceasing." When all the rice in the barn has
been used up, the two sheaves representing the husband and
wife remain in the empty building till they have gradually
disappeared or been devoured by mice. The pinch of hunger
sometimes drives individuals to eat up the rice of these two
sheaves, but the wretches who do so are viewed with disgust by
their fellows and branded as pigs and dogs. Nobody would ever
sell these holy sheaves with the rest of their profane brethren. 10
The same notion of the propagation of the rice by a male and
female power finds expression amongst the Szis of Upper Burma.
When the paddy, that is, the rice with the husks still on it, has
been dried and piled in a heap for threshing, all the friends of the
household are invited to the threshing-floor, and food and drink
are brought out. The heap of paddy is divided and one half spread
out for threshing, while the other half is left piled up. On the pile
food and spirits are set, and one of the elders, addressing "the
father and mother of the paddy-plant," prays for plenteous
harvests in future, and begs that the seed may bear many fold.
Then the whole party eat, drink, and make merry. This ceremony
at the threshing-floor is the only occasion when these people
invoke "the father and mother of the paddy." 11