Bali Week Specials :- The Origin of Rice Cultivation

In the beginning of the life of the human race, people did not have

to plan rice, nor to harvest it. Rice plants just grew in the fields

by the favour of the gods and when the grains were ripe, they would

join together and become balls of tasty rice pudding and then, by

themselves, these balls would come off the plants and roll away into

the people's grain barns. Every year it happened in this way so

that

people lived a leisurely and happy life.

However, nothing stays the same forever and later generations of

people became angry, greedy, and jealous. They began to open their

barn doors wider, even building extra barns, in the hope that more

rice balls would come rolling their way, even though no one had ever

lacked anything previously. However, human greed is not the result of

poverty but of abundance. People saw, or believed they saw, more

rice balls rolling into their neighbours' barn than into their

own,

their anger and greed making them suspicious. One bad day an old

woman grew so angry and jealous that she began to push the balls of

rice towards her own barn while they were rolling in the direction of

other barns. Soon every barn owners was following her bad example and

trying to make the rice balls change direction to their own benefit.

Of course it quickly developed into a scramble for the great stream

of balls they were rolling in the direction of the village. Within an

hour there was harassment by greedy neighbours which inevitably

developed into a terrible fight.

When the gods witnessed all this fighting they were amazed that human

beings could be so stupid that they would fight over the rice when

there was more than enough for everyone. In the fighting people fell

over each other and onto the rice balls which disintegrated into

scattered grains. The Gods then decreed that the people did not

deserve any rice at all. Rice is a sacred food and is desecrated by

fighting and violence.

Fortunately the Rice Goddess, Devi Sri, Who is the mother of all the

rice on the Earth, felt compassion when, after a year in which there

had been no rice at all, the people started to starve. So she told

the people, those who survived the feminine, that the next season

rice plants would grow again , but only if the people had themselves

sown the grains one by one in a special muddy field, then planted the

seedlings out in the big fields, then weeded these fields, then

harvested the rice, brought it to the farms, threshold it, winnowed

it , and cooked it.

She taught the people what to do, and how to worship her as the

mother of all the rice and so, of all the people too

Velder. 1968.

Mythology and Folklore in South East Asia.

Oxford University Press