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.
A scholar.
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.