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Java's Rice Goddess
| Article
# : |
11503 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
10 / 1986 |
5,682 Words |
| Author
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Jan Knappert
Jan Knappert is a folklorist and specialist in African and
Oriental languages who is based in Belgium. |
During the first quarter of this century, psychiatric institutions were founded in the cities of the Netherlands East Indies (as the Indies were then known). To these clinics were brought cases of every conceivable mental aberration encountered in the country.
One day in Surakarta (also known as Solo), in the early 1920s, a man was brought in by the police, handcuffed as a criminal. The story the police told was: "This man is a dangerous rebel. Without any reasonable cause, he broke into the office of the Resident, shouting that he wanted the Resident. When arrested, he jabbered something about dreaming dreams that he urgently wanted to talk to the Resident about, so it was concluded that he must be quite mad and he is therefore handed over to you."
The psychiatrist in charge gave the poor, harassed man time to recover, then examined him. His conclusion was that the man was neither dangerous, nor a rebel, nor indeed a madman. His condition was the result of growing up in a culture that was so completely different from that of the ruling power that the two nations could almost be said to live in two different realities. According to one set of concepts he was a lunatic; according to another, he was a saint and a chosen prophet of the goddess of rice.
Here is the man's own story:
Three times I had a dream, the most important dream of my life. I dreamed that I saw the rice goddess, who appeared to me descending from heaven. She warned me that this year would be a very wet one, that there would be heavy rains and bandjirs (floods), and that
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