Nyi Sri — also known in Java as Dewi Sri — is the Javanese goddess of rice, the central figure of that elaborate body of folklore and ritual which surrounds the cultivation of padi in the Javanese-speaking lands. She is mentioned by Snouck Hurgronje in Vol. I of The Achehnese in the course of his discussion of Achehnese rice-cultivation, by way of a contrast: the rice-goddess of Java, he observes, is not even known by name in Acheh.
Snouck Hurgronje’s notice occurs in his description of the superstitious observances that attend rice-cultivation in Acheh. “As we have seen,” he writes, “superstition plays its customary part in the rice-cultivation of the Achehnese; by no means, however, so important a part as in Java, where a description of the padi-planting constitutes a perfect treasury of folklore. Nyi Sri is not even known by name.” The negative observation is significant: the Achehnese, though rice-cultivators like the Javanese, have not developed — or have not retained — any cult of a personified rice-spirit comparable to that which still flourishes in Java.
The cult of Dewi Sri in Java is, indeed, one of the most elaborate surviving fragments of pre-Islamic Indonesian religion. She is the goddess of fertility, the spouse of the rice-plant itself, the ancestress of the Javanese race in some traditions; her image is woven into the standing crop, her favour is invoked at every stage of cultivation, and her blessing is celebrated at the harvest by ceremonies of considerable complexity. Whole chapters of Javanese folklore are taken up with the legends of her origin, her marriage, and her transformation into the rice-plant on which the life of the people depends.
In Acheh, by contrast, the rice-plant is treated, in religious terms, with marked reserve. Snouck Hurgronje can point, in place of a rice-goddess, only to “the defunct custom of the imòng padi” — a custom preserved as “a rudiment of the ideas on which the worship of the rice-goddess in Java is based” — and to a custom prevailing in the highlands, “when the rice is on the point of ripening (dara, marriageable, or rabbunteng, all but pregnant), [of laying] various kinds of sweetmeats on” certain objects. The metaphor of ripening rice as a marriageable girl is itself a relic of the same complex of ideas, but in Acheh it has been reduced to a single minor observance, and the figure of Nyi Sri herself has vanished from the Achehnese imagination.
The absence of Nyi Sri from Acheh is the more remarkable in view of the strongly Islamic character of Achehnese civilisation. The Achehnese, who pride themselves on the antiquity and purity of their Islam, have — whether by reason of that Islam or by reason of some earlier difference of custom — dispensed with the rice-cult that survives, side by side with an equally nominal Islam, among the Javanese. The contrast is one of the clearest examples in The Achehnese of the differentiation of Achehnese from Javanese custom, even in matters of subsistence that might have been expected to be common to both 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.
Nyi Sri — also known in Java as Dewi Sri — is the Javanese goddess of rice, the central figure of that elaborate body of folklore and ritual which surrounds the cultivation of padi in the Javanese-speaking lands. She is mentioned by Snouck Hurgronje in Vol. I of The Achehnese in the course of his discussion of Achehnese rice-cultivation, by way of a contrast: the rice-goddess of Java, he observes, is not even known by name in Acheh.
Snouck Hurgronje’s notice occurs in his description of the superstitious observances that attend rice-cultivation in Acheh. “As we have seen,” he writes, “superstition plays its customary part in the rice-cultivation of the Achehnese; by no means, however, so important a part as in Java, where a description of the padi-planting constitutes a perfect treasury of folklore. Nyi Sri is not even known by name.” The negative observation is significant: the Achehnese, though rice-cultivators like the Javanese, have not developed — or have not retained — any cult of a personified rice-spirit comparable to that which still flourishes in Java.
The cult of Dewi Sri in Java is, indeed, one of the most elaborate surviving fragments of pre-Islamic Indonesian religion. She is the goddess of fertility, the spouse of the rice-plant itself, the ancestress of the Javanese race in some traditions; her image is woven into the standing crop, her favour is invoked at every stage of cultivation, and her blessing is celebrated at the harvest by ceremonies of considerable complexity. Whole chapters of Javanese folklore are taken up with the legends of her origin, her marriage, and her transformation into the rice-plant on which the life of the people depends.
In Acheh, by contrast, the rice-plant is treated, in religious terms, with marked reserve. Snouck Hurgronje can point, in place of a rice-goddess, only to “the defunct custom of the imòng padi” — a custom preserved as “a rudiment of the ideas on which the worship of the rice-goddess in Java is based” — and to a custom prevailing in the highlands, “when the rice is on the point of ripening (dara, marriageable, or rabbunteng, all but pregnant), [of laying] various kinds of sweetmeats on” certain objects. The metaphor of ripening rice as a marriageable girl is itself a relic of the same complex of ideas, but in Acheh it has been reduced to a single minor observance, and the figure of Nyi Sri herself has vanished from the Achehnese imagination.
The absence of Nyi Sri from Acheh is the more remarkable in view of the strongly Islamic character of Achehnese civilisation. The Achehnese, who pride themselves on the antiquity and purity of their Islam, have — whether by reason of that Islam or by reason of some earlier difference of custom — dispensed with the rice-cult that survives, side by side with an equally nominal Islam, among the Javanese. The contrast is one of the clearest examples in The Achehnese of the differentiation of Achehnese from Javanese custom, even in matters of subsistence that might have been expected to be common to both 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.