Dewi Sri

At the wet edge of a Javanese rice field, where the water lies warm and shallow over the mud and the green stalks stand in rows, a snake slides between them and no one reaches for a stick. The farmers let it go. A serpent in the paddy, or one that finds its way into the house and settles in a cool dark corner, is not a danger to be chased off but a guest to be fed, because it may be hers, or her, and turning it away would mean turning away the harvest.

The rice belongs to Dewi Sri. So does the fertility of the soil, the swell of grain in the husk, and the difference between a year of plenty and a year of hunger. On Java, Bali, and Lombok she has been venerated for longer than the temples have stood, longer than the Hindu gods arrived to be braided into her story. Archaeologists have pulled stone and bronze figures of her out of ancient Javanese ground, and where Indian images of the goddess Lakshmi hold a red lotus, these hold a stalk of rice heavy with grain. The worship of her runs back past the first century, back to the prehistoric people who first coaxed wild rice into cultivation and carried it across the sea into the islands. When Hinduism came, she was greeted as a form of Lakshmi, consort of Vishnu, and the two were folded together. The fold never quite hid the older thing underneath.

Her origin, as the Sundanese tell it in the Wawacan Sulanjana, begins not with her but with a god who cannot work. Batara Guru, the highest god, commands every deity to build him a new palace, and warns that any who shirk will lose their arms and legs. This is a problem for Anta, a naga, a serpent god who has no arms and legs to begin with. He weeps at the unfairness of it, and where his three tears strike the ground they harden into three eggs that shine like jewels. Advised to offer them as a gift, he sets off with the eggs in his mouth, and on the road an eagle takes his silence for arrogance and attacks. Two eggs fall and smash, becoming a pair of wild boars. One survives. Batara Guru tells Anta to brood it, and from it hatches a baby girl, Nyai Pohaci Sanghyang Asri, who grows into a woman so beautiful that every god who looks at her wants her, her foster father among them.

That is where the story turns cruel. To keep this desire from tearing heaven apart, and to guard the girl’s chastity, the gods agree on the simplest solution available to them. They poison her. She is buried in a far and hidden place, and from the innocence of her death the ground answers with a miracle. Coconut rises from her head. Spices and fragrant herbs grow from her nose and lips and ears. Fruit trees come from her breasts, teak and hardwood from her arms, sugar palm from her loins, bamboo from her thighs, tubers from her legs. And from her navel rises the plant that matters most, the padi, the rice. Some tellers say white rice sprang from her right eye and red rice from her left. They killed her, and she fed them anyway.

She has a counterpart in the brother or companion Sedana, called Sadhana in Bali, and in every version where the two appear together they are pulled apart, by death, by wandering, or by a marriage that never happens. Where Sri is the rice paddy snake gliding through the stalks, Sadhana is the small swallow that flits above them. In the high courtly imagination of the wayang shadow theatre her face is painted white, her eyes thin and cast downward, her expression composed past any disturbance, and she shades into Sinta, the faithful wife of the Ramayana. The paired Loro Blonyo sculptures, a seated man and woman set in a Javanese home, are her and Sedana, the image of a household at peace with itself.

Her power is simply the power of the staple itself. Rice was wealth in the rice kingdoms of Sunda, Majapahit, and Mataram, and a surplus of it was the engine of their courts. To hold the rice is to hold life, prosperity, and the body’s plain survival. The same grip turns the other way. Withdraw her and the inverse follows, poverty and famine and the slow diseases of hunger, so her favour is something that must be actively kept rather than assumed. The Javanese and Sundanese hold a ceremony called mapag Sri, which means to fetch or call Sri, performed before the harvest to invite her spirit down into the field. Sundanese farmers sing the Pangemat and the Angin-angin to summon her over the rice seeds. In Bali her effigy, the cili, is woven from young coconut leaf or palm leaf or shaped from coloured sticky rice and set in shrines at the field’s edge, and at the Ngusaba Nini her spirit is carried to the rice barn where the harvest will sleep. A small carved shrine called the Pasrean waits in traditional homes, hung with images of snakes, holding a little sickle for the cutting of the grain. None of it works by force. She is invited, never compelled, and a goddess who once died of others’ bad faith is owed at least that courtesy.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Dewi Sri?

Dewi Sri is the Javanese, Sundanese, and Balinese goddess of rice and fertility, worshipped across Java, Bali, and Lombok in Indonesia. She governs rice, the staple crop of the region, and through it life, wealth, and prosperity. Her worship predates the arrival of Hinduism in the archipelago, though she was later equated with the Hindu goddess Lakshmi.

How did rice come from Dewi Sri?

In the most widely told myth, Dewi Sri, born as Nyai Pohaci Sanghyang Asri, was poisoned and killed by the gods to prevent her foster father Batara Guru’s forbidden desire for her from destroying heaven. After she was buried, useful plants grew miraculously from her body, with rice rising from her navel, coconut from her head, and fruit, bamboo, and spices from her other parts. From then on the people of Java revered her as the goddess of rice.

Why is Dewi Sri associated with snakes?

Dewi Sri is linked to the rice paddy snake, or ular sawah, which moves through the flooded fields she governs. Across much of Asia the snake is a symbol of fertility rather than evil, so a serpent in the rice field or the home is taken as a good omen of a successful harvest. Rural Javanese tradition holds that such a snake should be fed and left alone rather than driven away.

How is Dewi Sri worshipped today?

Farmers honour Dewi Sri with harvest ceremonies and offerings meant to invite her spirit into the field and the rice barn. The Javanese and Sundanese perform the mapag Sri rite to call her before the harvest, while Balinese farmers weave cili effigies from palm leaf and place them in field shrines. Many traditional Javanese homes keep a small shrine called a Pasrean dedicated to her.

Is Dewi Sri the same as the Hindu goddess Lakshmi?

Dewi Sri is often equated with Lakshmi, the consort of Vishnu, after Hinduism reached the Indonesian archipelago, and the two share associations with wealth and prosperity. However, her worship as a rice goddess is native to Java and older than Hindu influence, and her iconography differs from Indian images of Lakshmi. Indonesian figures show Dewi Sri holding a sprig of rice rather than Lakshmi’s red lotus.

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