Woman picking cotton, and man plaiting a sieve.
As might be expected the principle of solidarity which pervades these laws and customs, manifests itself even more strongly in the domestic life of the dessa-folk.
A Javanese family.
Mat-plaiting.
The ties of kinship—though not those of marriage—are much respected by them. Parents are so absolutely sure of the love and filial piety of their children, that they often, as they grow older, abandon all their property to them, content to live for the remainder of their days as their sons' and daughter's pensioners. And even the most distant relation, who, like the nearest, is termed brother or sister, may count, in case of need, upon assistance and hospitality. Parents are free to bequeath their property as they like; and they sometimes give everything to the first-born son or daughter, without any of the other children protesting. But, just as frequently, the heritage is left to all the descendants in common, when the paternal house is enlarged, so as to afford room for all the married sons and daughters and their families; and the produce of the fields is equally divided amongst them, as they equally divide the labour and the toil. Thus, through all chances and changes, the communistic principle is still maintained in the small community of the family, as in the greater one of the dessa. And indeed it may be said that the dessa is but the enlarged paternal house of the Javanese. All the inhabitants of it are his kinsfolk and nearest of blood, whose interests are his own, whose prosperity or misery is bound up with his, and who are his natural allies in defending the common inheritance against the stranger. The bamboo enclosure which defines and defends the dessa and the environing fields—the common possession of all—are the symbols and the outward visible signs of this.
Such then are the conditions which determine the existence of the Javanese husbandman—a happy life on the whole, exempt from hardship, excessive toil and care, and not without dignity or idyllic grace.