Part 11

In this he does but as Jews and Greeks did before him. But there is a distinguishing detail about Javanese sacrificial rites,--a feature, which one is never quite sure whether to call eminently spiritual or naïvely gross and selfish. Of the food offered they believe the deity to enjoy the savour only; the celestial being disdains the material part. And so the worshippers, after a decorous interval of waiting, when they may suppose the invisible and imponderable essence of the meal to have been absorbed by the god, make a cheerful repast on the visible and ponderable parts left on the altar, thus combining piety and high living in one and the same act. In Java, if anywhere, it may be said, that, when the gods are honoured the people fare well.

It would be somewhat invidious to inquire whether piety or appetite be the impelling motive; but, from whatever cause, the Javanese are most assiduous in the performance of sacrificial rites. Not only are the cardinal events of human existence, births, marriages and deaths, and the recurrent epochs of the agricultural year honoured with solemn observances, but any and every incident of daily existence is made the occasion of a "Sedeka."

Sedeka is offered on setting out on a journey, on entering into any contract or agreement, on moving into a new house, on taking possession of a newly-acquired field: the sacrifice being oftenest dedicated to the "Danhjang dessa," tutelary genius of towns and villages; to the spirits who render the soil fertile; to the goddess Sri, protectress of the rice crops; and to all the ancestors, up to Father Adam and Mother Eve. Then too, side by side with these benignant deities, the wicked "seitans" and djinns are worshipped, the princes of the air, as powerful for evil as Sri and the Danhjang Dessa are for good. It is they who send plagues and pestilence, who make the babe to die at its mother's breast, and the buffalo to drop dead on the half-ploughed field; who cause fires to destroy villages, and floods to sweep away the standing crops; and who seduce men to theft, deceit, robbery, and violence. Since, then, they are so powerful for harm, it is wise to keep on terms of amity with them, and give even the Devil his due, bringing him the appointed sacrifices of eggs and yellow boreh-unguent and jessamine blossoms.

These evil spirits, it should be noted, are exceedingly jealous, and one should never glory in the possession of any desirable thing, such as good health, riches, power, or, above all, fine children, lest in their spite, they should turn these blessings into curses. But humility, or still better contempt of the things men generally covet, conciliates them. Wherefore a Javanese mother will often call her child, more particularly if it be remarkable for grace and beauty, by a name implying that it is hateful, ugly and altogether worthless.

Among the saints of El-Islam, Joseph the father of the Christian prophet Jesus, is the one whom Javanese matrons venerate above all others; from him they implore the gift of beauty for their children. Nor do they implore in vain. Javanese babies are absolutely charming. The brilliancy of their black eyes, and the dusky tints of their soft skin give their round little faces a piquancy altogether fascinating. The blue eyes, fair hair and pale complexion of European children seem insipid by comparison. Now and then one sees faces amongst them, innocent and earnest as those which on Murillo's canvases surround the Madonna in cloud-like clusters. But alas! these heavenly memories fade soon. The suns of a few East monsoons utterly wither them. Villon, could he see the grown-up youths and maidens of Java, would vary his melancholy refrain about fair dead ladies. "But where are the babes of yester-year?"

Among adults beauty is as rare as, among children, it is common. So that after all, it seems Saint Joseph takes the prayer for fine children "at the foot of the letter" and answers the petition in a somewhat ironical spirit.

Of the many "Sedeka's" which grace the agricultural year, those connected with the cultivation of the rice-plant are the most important. Java is essentially what, according to tradition, its ancient name betokens--the Land of the Rice. The whole island is one vast rice-field. 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 uttermost verge of the horizon, everything has one and the same colour, the bluish green of the young, or the tawny 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 approximately 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 endowed 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 a 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 a 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 the frequent altars under old waringin-trees, in which the Danhjang dessa, tutelary genius of towns and villages, is believed to dwell. Hence the solemn sacrifices to the Lady of the Sea, Njai Loro Kidoel, who has her shrine on the rocky south-coast. And hence too the rites in honour of Dewi Sri, the Javanese Demeter, whose soul animates the rice-plant,--rites which culminate in the Wedding of the Rice.

At every Harvest-Home this mystical ceremony, the Pari Penganten, is celebrated; and the manner of its conducting is as follows:

As soon as the owner of a field sees his rice ripening, he goes to the "dookoon-sawah" literally, the "medicine man of the rice-field," to consult 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 it requires all the astrological, necromantic and cabalistic knowledge of the dookoon-sawah to settle it. 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 cabalistic values corresponding to the year, the month, the day, and the hour enter, an acceptable date is at last fixed upon by the dookoon-sawah, on which the selection of the Rice-Bride and Bridegroom is to take place.

On the appointed day, having first solemnly consecrated the field by walking round it with a bundle of burning rice-straw in his hand, and by the planting of tall glagahstalks at each of the four corners, invoking Dewi Sri as he does so,--the dookoon 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 Bride and Bridegroom; the four others the bridesmaids and the "best men," (if the term may be used to designate what the French call garçons d'honneur.) These couples are now tied together as they stand, with strips of palm-leaves, and the doekoen invokes on them the 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 for them. The marriage now is concluded; the stalks are smeared with yellow boreh-unguent, 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 dookoon, the owner of the field and his family, 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 doekoen, 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, have taken any part, however slight, in the cultivation 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-cloth on which for weeks and weeks they have been patiently tracing elaborate patterns with wax, and blue 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 dookoon-sawah is the first to enter it; and, as he does so, he in this wise greets the spirits of the field.

"O! thou invisible Pertijan Siluman! do not render vain the labour 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 grand-children! let them all be 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 spirits that protect 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 wooden blade; the reaper, holding the hilt in the fingers of his right hand, with the thumb presses the rice-stalk against the small knife, severing the ear, which he gathers in his left 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. 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, which broke off the ripe ears with its bill, taught mortals the manner in which it pleased her that her good gift of the rice should be gathered. And accordingly, her votaries to the present day do gather in thus, culling each ear separately. In their opinion, to use a sickle would be to show a wanton disrespect to the goddess, and a contempt of her precious gift, as if it were not worth gathering in a seemly manner; a sacrilege which the outraged deity would not fail to avenge by famine and pestilence. On the other hand, what would they gain by departing from their ancestors' honoured custom, and adopting instead the manners of the men from Holland? "Time," these men respond. 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. What absurdity is this talk of "gaining" an assured and ever-present possession?

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; but he works in a quiet deliberate fashion, for just so long as he thinks pleasant, or fit, or when the monsoon threatens, unavoidable; and then he stops; and, if the task be not 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 cometh of the evil.

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 devolves the honourable duty of conducting them thither, don their very best 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 set phrase, they inform the Rice-Bride and Bridegroom that the house is swept and garnished, and all things ready for their reception. The procession then wends its way to the granary, where a small space, surrounded by screens and spread with clean new matting, represents the bridal chamber.

The Rice-Bride and Groom and their "maids and youths of honour" are introduced into this miniature room, the other sheaves are piled up in the loomboong (rice-born) and when the whole harvest is stored, the dookoon-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 meet that thou shouldst provide for all thy children and grandchildren."

Then the door of the loomboong is locked; and during forty days none dare unlock it. At the end of that time the honey-moon of the Rice-Bride and Bridegroom is supposed to be over. The owner of the field comes to the loomboong, unlocks the door, and in set phrase invites the couple to an excursion on the river. "The boat," he says, "lies ready; and the rowers know how to handle the oars." With this comparison the process of husking the grain is designated.

The sheaves are laid in the hollowed-out tree-trunk which serves as a kind of mortar, and the women, bringing down the long wooden pestles in a rhythmic cadence husk the rice. And this is the end of the Pari Penganten.

But, as the proverb has it, "of a wedding comes a wedding" and this mystic marriage of the rice invariably proves the prelude to marriages among the young folk of the dessa, who have met and wooed and won one another during the long days of common work and play in the ripe rice-field. During our stay on the Tjeremai hill-side we had occasion to convince ourselves of this. The Pari Penganten was but just over when we arrived; and already several marriages were being arranged in the dessa, among the number that of the headman's pretty daughter to a good-looking youth, her remote cousin.

As a preliminary the village scholar had been consulted as to the young couple's chances of happiness; and he having declared the cabalistic meaning of their united initials to be "a broadly-branching waringin-tree" which is the symbol of health, riches and a numerous progeny, the parents, reassured as to the future of their children, had begun negotiations about the dowry. This, it should be noted, is given by the family of the future husband.

After a great deal of haggling and protesting, they had at last agreed upon a sum about half-way between the amount originally offered by the bridegroom's parents and that demanded by the father of the bride. In due course, then, the youth had sent the customary presents of food, clothes, and domestic utensils to the house of his bride. And now he was busy preparing himself for the great day. He had had his teeth filed almost to the gums, and blackened till they shone like lacquer, so that his enthusiastic mother and sisters compared his mouth to the ripe pomegranate, in which the black seeds show through the red flesh. And, day by day, he went to the village-priest to recite to him the words of the marriage-formula, which he did, sitting up to his chin in the cold water of the tank behind the mosque, the priest standing over him, Koran in hand. The bride, on her side, had been living on a diet of three tea-spoonfuls of rice and a glass of hot water per diem, so as to lose flesh and--according to Javanese notions--gain beauty against the happy day; and to the great satisfaction of her family she was now so thin, that they could almost see the flame of the oilwick shining through her.

Meanwhile the entire population of the dessa was busy with preparations for the marriage-feast. The women might be seen all day long, under the pent-roof of the bride's house and in the kitchen, pounding rice, boiling vegetables, broiling fish, roasting goats' flesh, and mixing all manner of condiments for the innumerable dishes, which figure at a Javanese repast. And the young men were chopping wood and carrying water as if for their livelihood.

At length the wedding-day arrived.

The sun had hardly risen when already the women of the village were up and stirring, hastening on their way to the house of the bride, whom they were to assist at her toilet. This was a most complicated affair, the girl's hair having to be dressed in a curious and elaborate fashion, requiring much twisting and coiling of oil-saturated tresses, interwoven with wreaths of jessamine blossom, and fixed with large ornamental pins; and a row of little curls must be painted on the forehead with black pigment. Furthermore the face must be carefully whitened with rice-powder, and the shoulders and arms anointed with yellow boreh-unguent. It need hardly be said that it required the whole morning to bring these many and delicate operations to a satisfactory end.

The men, meanwhile, with the father of the bride at their head, had gone to the house of the bridegroom, to conduct him in solemn procession to the mosque, where the priest was to perform the marriage-ceremony between him and the representative of the bride; for, according to Javanese notions, a woman has no business at a wedding--least of all at her own. From the mosque the groom then returned to his own house, where he proceeded to a toilet hardly less elaborate than that of his bride. After a considerable time, he issued forth again, resplendent with boreh-unguent, garlands of jessamine-blossoms and silver ornaments. He mounted a richly caparisoned pony, which his "youth of honour" held ready for him; and, at the head of the procession, triumphantly rode to his bride's house, where the guests were waiting, my friends and I among the number, to witness the meeting of the newly-wedded pair.

As the bridegroom drew rein in front of the house, the bride supported by two maids of honour, slowly came out of her chamber. With measured steps the two advanced towards each other; and whilst yet at some distance paused. Two small bags of sirih-leaves containing chalk and betel-nuts were handed them; and with a quick movement each threw his at the other's head. The bride's little bag struck the groom full in the face. "It is she that will rule the roost," said one of the women, chuckling. And I fancied I saw a gleam of satisfaction pass over the bride's demure little face, half hidden though it was by the strings of beads and jessamine flowers dependent from her head dress. The next moment however, she had humbly knelt down on the floor. One of the bridesmaids handed her a basin full of water, and a towel; and she proceeded to wash her husband's feet, in token of loyalty and loving submission.

When she was done, he took her by the hand, raising her; and led her towards the middle of the apartment, where a piece of matting was spread on the floor. On this she squatted down, holding up a handkerchief; and the bridegroom threw into it some rice, some "peteh"-beans and some money, symbolising the sustenance which he bound himself to afford her. The symbolical ceremonies were then concluded by his sitting down next to her, and putting three spoonfuls of rice, kneaded into little balls, into her mouth, after which he ate himself what was left in the dish. The solemn part of the proceedings being now over, the festivities began.

As a preliminary, the bridal party was to go in solemn procession through the village; and they were marshalled in order before the door.

A curious cortege it was. At the head appeared two "barongans" the images of a giant and a giantess, carried on the shoulders of men who were hidden in the large framework; then came the gamelan orchestra, bells, drums, kettles, viols and all; next a group of men mounted on hobby-horses, and beating on the sonorous "angkloeng."[19] After these came some half dozen women, carrying the bridal insignia--paper birds, bunches of green leaves and paper flowers, and tall fans made of peacocks feathers. A group of priests followed, beating tambourines and chanting a sort of epithalamium. Next came the bride and her maidens in a litter, carried upon the shoulders of four men; and immediately after her the bridegroom on horseback followed by a group of musicians. The wedding-guests brought up the rear.

In this order the procession took the road; went round the dessa twice; and finally halted at the house of the bridegroom.

[19] An instrument composed of a series of graduated bamboo tubes.

The father appeared in the door, as soon as he heard the music approaching; came out to meet the procession; and advancing towards the litter of the bride, lifted her out of it, and carried her into the house, where the bridegroom's relations were seated in a circle to receive her. To these she was now, with great ceremony, introduced as the daughter of the house, whilst she and the bridegroom saluted every member of the assembly in turn, by kneeling down and kissing his or her feet.

The guests were then invited to enter, and the men sat down to a repast, at which the women served them, whilst the bride and bridegroom took their meal together, separately from the rest.

We took advantage of the momentary bustle to slip away unobserved. There was not a soul to be seen on the moonlit village street; the huts were dark and silent; and at the entrance of the village the watchman on duty for the night had left his post vacant.