The Golden Bough (Third Edition, Vol. 7 of 12) - Mirrors

§ 4. The Rice-mother in the East Indies. 217gentleness and courtesy to all animate and inanimate things.” 577“It is a familiar fact,” says another eminent authority on the The soul-stuff ofEast Indies, “that the Indonesian imagines rice to be animated, tobe provided with ‘soul-stuff.’ Since rice is everywhere cultivatedin the Indian Archipelago, and with some exceptions is the staplefood, we need not wonder that the Indonesian conceives therice to be not merely animated in the ordinary sense but to bepossessed of a soul-stuff which in strength and dignity ranks withthat of man. Thus the Bataks apply the same word tondi to thesoul-stuff of rice and the soul-stuff of human beings. Whereas theDyaks of Poelopetak give the name of gana to the soul-stuff ofthings, animals, and plants, they give the name of hambaruan tothe soul-stuff of rice as well as of man. So also the inhabitants ofrice.[183]Halmahera call the soul-stuff of things and plants giki and duhutu,but in men and food they recognise a gurumi. Of the Javanese,Malays, Macassars, Buginese, and the inhabitants of the islandof Buru we know that they ascribe a sumangè, sumangat, orsĕmangat to rice as well as to men. So it is with the Toradjas ofCentral Celebes; while they manifestly conceive all things andplants as animated, they attribute a tanoana or soul-stuff only tomen, animals, and rice. It need hardly be said that this customoriginates in the very high value that is set on rice.” 578577 R. J. Wilkinson (of the Civil Service of the Federated Malay States), MalayBeliefs (London and Leyden, 1906), pp. 49-51. On the conception of the soulas a bird, see Taboo and the Perils of the Soul, pp. 33 sqq. The Toradjas ofCentral Celebes think that the soul of the rice is embodied in a pretty littleblue bird, which builds its nest in the rice-field when the ears are forming andvanishes after harvest. Hence no one may drive away, much less kill, thesebirds; to do so would not only injure the crop, the sacrilegious wretch himselfwould suffer from sickness, which might end in blindness. See A. C. Kruyt,“De Rijstmoeder in den Indischen Archipel,” p. 374 (see the full reference inthe next note).578 A. C. Kruyt, “De Rijstmoeder in den Indischen Archipel,” Verslagenen Mededeelingen der koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen, AfdeelingLetterkunde, Vierde Reeks, v. part 4 (Amsterdam, 1903), pp. 361 sq. Thisessay (pp. 361-411) contains a valuable collection of facts relating to what the