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Believing the rice to be animated by a soul like that of a man, the
Indonesians naturally treat it with the deference and the
consideration which they show to their fellows. Thus they behave
towards the rice in bloom as they behave towards a pregnant woman;
they abstain from firing guns or making loud noises in the field,
lest they should so frighten the soul of the rice that it would
miscarry and bear no grain; and for the same reason they will not
talk of corpses or demons in the rice-fields. Moreover, they feed
the blooming rice with foods of various kinds which are believed to
be wholesome for women with child; but when the rice-ears are just
beginning to form, they are looked upon as infants, and women go
through the fields feeding them with rice-pap as if they were human
babes. In such natural and obvious comparisons of the breeding plant
to a breeding woman, and of the young grain to a young child, is to
be sought the origin of the kindred Greek conception of the
Corn-mother and the Corn-daughter, Demeter and Persephone.


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