Another Tradition of Harvesting

     According to Oxford Dictionary, ritual is a series of actions that are always carried out in the same way, especially as a part of religious. A ritual may best be defined, perhaps, as a prescribed way of performing religious acts, that is, of praying, singing sacred songs, dancing to the gods, making sacrifices, or preparing offerings (Beals and Hoijer, 1964).

            Ritual is one of cultural part in a society. In the past, the ritual is closely connected with the community. People usually perform ritual activities to be offered to their ancestors. They believe that the ancestors will give them goodness and blessing. Beside that it also showed their respect to the ancestors. But now only a few people who are still doing ritual activities that are very sacred. Maybe it is because the development of increasingly sophisticated technology.

The Javanese is rich of their cultures. Most of them still keep their tradition. One of the traditions is the rite before harvesting rice. This rite is still held in a village named Tasikhargo, Jatisrono, Wonogiri. This rite is mostly called methik. Methik is a word derived from Javanese meaning to pick something. Methik is held only for harvesting rice since rice is the main food for people there. This rite is not held for harvesting other plants.

This rite is simple because it doesn’t take a long preparation. People only need to cook nasi giling, pecel, and panggang. Nasi giling is kind of rice shaped like a ball, while pecel is like a salad yet it is mixed with nut sauces. Then, panggang is a roasted chicken. Besides them, there will always nasi uduk, seasoned rice. To held this rite, people will invite their neighborhood to come and pray together, then they will eat the food. However, they will not eat all the food since some of the food will be spread in rice field. This shows their thankfulness to the God for the blessing.

Now, the rite is the simple one, and they pray to the God for the safety. But long time ago, this rite is used to respect Dewi Sri or usually known as dewi padi. They believe that she is god who keeps their rice and farm. So, they do the rite to show their thankfulness, and to ask to keep their harvest done well. Most of people still keep this rite because they think this is their culture that should be kept. Besides it, they are afraid if they don’t do it, their harvest will not done well, and there will be something bad happens to the farmers or the people who harvest the rice.