The Inong padi — literally “the female padi” or, in older usage, “the mother of the padi” — is an Achehnese agricultural rite in which a handful of the seedlings remaining over in the nursery after the planting out is completed is planted in a clump in the umong (the cultivated field). C. Snouck Hurgronje treats it in The Achehnese as one of those Achehnese customs the original meaning of which has been wholly forgotten but which are still pretty generally followed.
The Rite
After the planting of the seedlings has been completed according to the pula system — by which the seedlings are taken from the nursery (seuneulong) and planted out at intervals in the field — a handful of those remaining is planted in a clump in the middle of the umong. This clump is called the inong padi. The word inong in modern Achehnese means “woman” or “female,” but sundry expressions in the folk-lore indicate that it must also have had, in ancient times, the signification of “mother.” The inong padi is thus, etymologically, the “mother of the padi.”
Parallels and Survivals
The rite has close parallels in the husbandry of other Indonesian peoples. In all large herds of buffaloes or oxen and flocks of goats or poultry, there is usually one animal, tamer than the rest, which acts as leader of the flock. This is called the inong and is never sold or slaughtered, for that would bring ill-luck to the rest. If a gold-washer finds in a stream a nugget somewhat resembling a living creature in shape, he keeps it as inong meuih, convinced that it will bring him luck in his subsequent quest for gold. So also with those who prepare the famous healing draught made from the root of the peundang: when a piece of root of similar form is found it is called by them inong peundang. In like manner, the inong padi, though it is of course unable to attain its proper growth owing to its being planted together in a clump, probably had the same significance for the growth of the padi — though this meaning has now gradually faded from the popular mind.
The institution is closely parallel to the indung pare or “rice-mother” of the Sundanese of west Java, a truss of ripe padi taken at harvest time and fastened together in a peculiar way. It is placed in the padi-store underneath all the other trusses with sundry traditional ceremonies, and is not removed from its place until the lapse of time has made it indistinguishable from the rest. The Achehnese inong padi and the Sundanese indung pare are evidently two survivals of a single archaic Indonesian fertility-cult, in which a “mother” of the crop was set apart to ensure the continued fertility of the field and the abundance of the harvest.
Cultural Significance
The survival of the inong padi in Acheh is the more striking in that the Achehnese, as Snouck Hurgronje repeatedly observes, have lost the meaning of many of their oldest customs. In ancient Achehnese poems, a hero is sometimes called inong in the sense of “chief” of a great tribe — a usage which preserves the older meaning of the word as “mother” or “source.” Among fowls, a hen which has begun to lay is called inong manòë, and the name manòë inong is given to one such as the above. The persistence of the inong padi rite in the rice-fields of Acheh thus connects the modern Achehnese peasant with a pre-Islamic agricultural tradition shared by the Sundanese, the Javanese, and other Indonesian peoples.
See Also
Source
The Achehnese, Vol. I, by Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje, translated by A.W.S. O’Sullivan, indexed by R.J. Wilkinson. Leyden: E.J. Brill, 1906.