The dessa-man has to work, certainly, but he need not slave; a very moderate exertion is sufficient to procure him what food and raiment he wants. His neighbours are his next of kin, and spite occasional bickerings, his helpful friends. He has himself chosen the village-chief to whose authority he defers, and is free to follow that ancestral law of the adat, which, to him, is the embodiment of supreme wisdom and justice. And as he goes about his daily business, his labour in wood and field, still keeping time to the recurrent rhythm of the seasons, is graced by many a ceremony and religious rite, which while honouring the gods, rejoices the hearts of the worshippers.
At these religious festivals called "Sedeka," sacrifices of flowers and fruits are offered to the deity and the ancient, naïve idea, that which is pleasant to human beings must also be acceptable to the gods, causes the Javanese to lay on his altar offering of the eatables he is fondest of himself. Such as spice-flavoured rice and all manner of sweetmeats.
A bamboo hut.
Weighing rice-sheaves.
Native official.
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."