Rice paddy

“ It was a rainy morning, and the green rice plain looked greener under the gray sky as we rode away from Nara. Men and women were working in the fields, wading knee-deep in the mud and water, stirring the muck around the young shoots, and tearing up the water-weeds with iron hooks. No other grain requires as much care as rice, and from the first transplanting from the seed-bed until the ears of grain are formed, there is continuous grubbing in the mire of the paddy fields. ”

“ The paddy and rice are a perquisite of the barber. Those who have been shaved [85] bathe, and then follows the crow-feeding ceremony. Rice is boiled in a bell-metal vessel over a hearth prepared with three young cocoanuts. The eldest son, who tore the cloth of succession from the corpse, makes the rice into two little balls, places them on a plantain leaf, and offers them to the spirit of the departed by pouring libations of water on them over a blade of karuka grass. Men and women who are under pollution then do the same. The rice balls are eaten by crows. ”

“ Page 70 Just one-half of the cultivated area of Japan is devoted to paddy, but there is to be added to this area under rice more than a quarter million acres producing the upland rice, the yield of which is lower than that of paddy rice. The paddy and upland rice areas together make up more than a half of the cultivated land. The paddies which are not in situations favourable to the production of second crops of rice (they are grown in one prefecture only) are used, if the water can be drawn off, for growing barley or wheat or green manure as a second crop [63] . ”

“ These people grow rice, which is to them what maize is to the Egyptian. In the fields, before it has been threshed, it is known as paddy. They live on rice and very little else, and seem to thrive on it. Rice pudding if repeated every day for a month at both breakfast and dinner would grow monotonous, but the man of the East does not find it so. His rice is not cooked with milk but with water, and is eaten with a little curry made of fish or vegetables to give it flavour. ”

“ Four months more are needed for the ripening of the grain, during which the fields are kept clear of weeds, the natives wading back and forth through the mud in their task. After cutting and heaping, the paddy is made into stacks. In six weeks more the grain is separated from the straw by treading or by the use of the flail, or by causing ponies to trot over it. It may be said that there is nothing in nature more beautiful than a valley of green ripening rice in the midst of verdant hills. In the flood of rich color beneath my eyes, I have gazed upon such a scene with inexpressible delight. ”

“ A male slave gets three hanis of paddy (unhusked rice) or a hani and a half of rice daily, besides a small quantity of salt. The female slave gets two hanis of paddy, and, if they be man and wife, they can easily sell a portion of the rice to procure other necessaries of life. They are also allowed one cloth each every year, and, besides, when transferred from one master to another, they get a cocoanut, a jack tree (Artocarpus integrifolia) , and a piece of land where they can sow ten or twenty seers of rice. ”

“ Their daily maintenance is supplied to them by their masters themselves. Every morning the master's agent summons them to his house, and takes them away to work in the fields, in ploughing, drawing water from wells, and in short doing the whole of the cultivation. In the evening a certain quantity of paddy (unhusked rice) is distributed to them as wages. ”

“ These works bear witness to the patience, industry and skill of the Kandyan villagers. In the low country to the north and east and north-west of the hills, irrigation works of a more expensive kind are necessary. In January 1892, the immemorial rent or tax on fields of paddy (rice in the husk) was removed, but not the customs duty on imported rice. But even with the advantage of protection to the extent of 10% in the local markets, there has been no extension of paddy cultivation; on the contrary, the import of grain from India has grown larger year by year. ”

“ Towards Christmas, to lighten the load of the heavy political wrangling, I took to the fields. The paddy fields that is. As a Goan urban dweller, I am familiar with the white side of rice — as it appears in all its culinary simplicity and elegance on the plate. ”

“ To all mankind the privileges of this great second{8} deliverance are offered; and let us remember that, like the Israelites, we are but strangers and pilgrims here, hastening on to a land of promise.”
6th.—Mary asked Colonel Travers to-day why rice is called paddy in the East Indies. He told us that the wet lands capable of being cultivated for rice, are called, in the province of Malabar, padda land; and thence has the name paddy been given to the grain before the husk is beaten off. It is cultivated in all the low grounds which are periodically overflowed ”

“ He then takes a handful of paddy (unhusked rice) from a quantity placed in front of him, and, after counting, decides, upon the chance of one or two grains remaining in the end after each of them is removed, whether some one in the house is not attacked by, or liable to the attack of some evil spirit. ”

“ To the north, rice makes way for millet, the great supplementary food of Korea. Elsewhere paddy-fields abound, and the people have become adepts in the principles of irrigation and the art of conserving water. Rice is sown in May, transplanted from the nurseries to the paddy-fields in June, and gathered in October. In times of drought, when it is necessary to tide over the period of distress, the fields are used for barley, oats and rye which, ripening in May and cut in June, allows a supplementary crop to be taken from the fields. The fields are then prepared for the rice. ”

“ It has never been demonstrated that the Japanese farmer prefers arduous amphibious labour to the dry-land farming in which most of the world's land workers are engaged; but the cultivation of paddy or a large proportion of paddy is his traditional way of farming. Rice culture also means to him the production of the crop which, when weather conditions favour, is more profitable than any other. In Hokkaido, as we have seen, the remunerative kind of agriculture is mixed farming, and, in a large part of the country, rice cannot be grown at all. ”

“ The mean yield of paddy rice is nearly 33 bushels per acre. The prefecture has a population of 1,293,470, or about four to the acre of cultivated field, and the total crop of rice is such as, to provide 236 pounds to each person. ”

“ This was the end of the ceremony.349 In Minahassa, a district of Celebes, the people have a festival of “eating the new rice.” Fowls or pigs are killed; some of the flesh, with rice and palm-wine, is set apart for the gods, and then the eating and drinking begin.350 The people of Kobi and Sariputi, two villages on the north-east coast of Ceram, offer the first-fruits of the paddy, in the form of cooked rice, with tobacco and other things, to their ancestors as a token of gratitude. ”

“ Water is only retained in the field until the ears are half ripe, otherwise they would ripen indifferently and be destroyed by vermin. A variety of coast paddy, called "moottoo samboo," was introduced into the Kandian province in 1832, which was found to produce a more abundant crop, by one third, than the native. It is of six months growth.
In Kashmir rice is the staple of cultivation, and the practice adopted there is thus described by a writer in my "Colonial Magazine," vol. ”

“ The crop is then started, and the farmer has little to do till the time of harvest, beyond taking care that his fields have plenty of water. When the harvest is made, the paddy—as the uncleaned rice is called—is cut and taken to the mill. ”

“ The average area of the paddy field in Japan is officially reported at 1.14 se, or an area of but 31 by 40 feet. Excluding Hokkaido, Formosa and Karafuto, fifty-three per cent of the irrigated rice lands in Japan are in allotments smaller than one-eighth of an acre, and seventy-four per cent of other cultivated lands are held in areas less than one-fourth of an acre, and each of these may be further subdivided. ”

“ Then that woman made the girl boil and dry seven large baskets of paddy (unhusked rice) , and pound the paddy in those seven, and bring seven large pots of water, and bring seven bundles of firewood. Then taking a piece of coconut shell with a hole in it, she put ashes at the bottom, and having placed a fire-charcoal on them, gave it to her. While the girl was going home, the ashes fell through the hole all along the path.
Afterwards, when the Rākshasa came home, “What is this, Bolan?” he asked the woman; “there is a smell of a human body, a human body that has been here.” ”

“ Extensive small-farmer paddy-rice farming.
Rice provides a good and equitable rural income. In most respects paddy-rice farming appears to be sustainable because annual flooding brings in nutrients, but it has all the potential problems of monoculture and rice rust (a fungus similar to wheat rust) on a small farm near Anyama. ”

“ Males wear brass finger and toe-rings, sometimes of silver. Some adorn their necks with wreaths of beads, from fifteen to thirty in number. Females wear ear-ornaments known as kātumani, which are rings of metal wire, four or five in number. Males generally allow their hair to grow, the face alone being now and then shaven. The Urālis eat rice for six months of the year, and subsist on roots, fruits, and other forest produce during the remaining half. A large portion of the paddy (rice) that the Urālis gather by cultivation goes to the low country in exchange for clothing and salt. ”

“ The Idiyans prepare rice in a special manner. Paddy is soaked in water, and roasted over a fire. While hot, it is placed in a mortar, and pounded with a pestle. This rice is called avil, which is said to be largely used as a delicacy in Travancore, and to be employed in certain religious ceremonies. ”

“ If all the land in use now, or until recently, for paddy-raising were suitable for the cultivation of such crops as hemp, tobacco, cocoanuts, etc., for which there is a steady demand abroad, the abandonment of rice for another produce which would yield enough to enable one to purchase rice, and even leave a margin of profit, would be rather an advantage than otherwise. ”

“ Paddy fields are to be seen in every valley or dell where farming is practicable; they are divided into square, oblong or triangular plots by grass-grown ridges a few inches in height and on an average a foot in breadth—the rice being planted in the soft mud thus enclosed. Narrow pathways intersect Rice. ”

“ The harvest succeeds the planting in four months. The rice ears are cut short off, sometimes by a small sickle, and sometimes by an instrument which produces the effect of shears. Threshing consists in beating the ears with thick sticks to loosen the husks, after which the padi is carried in baskets to platforms ten feet above the ground, and is allowed to fall on mats, when the chaff is driven away by the wind. It is husked by a pestle, and it requires some skill to avoid crushing the grain. All these operations are performed by women. ”

“ Every one believes that she takes care of the rice in the barn and even multiplies it not uncommonly.
When the Tomori of Central Celebes are about to plant the rice, they bury in the field some betel as an offering to the spirits who cause the rice to grow. The rice that is planted round this spot is the last to be reaped at harvest. At the commencement of the reaping the stalks of this patch of rice are tied together into a sheaf, which is called "the Mother of the Rice" (_ineno pae_) , and offerings in the shape of rice, fowl's liver, eggs, and other things are laid down before it. ”

“ A ladle-full is handed out to each man, who receives it on his leaf. The rice is served out by the hands of the attendants. The guests manipulate a huge ball of rice and curry mixed between the fingers of the right hand, pass this solemnly into their widely-gaping mouths, with the head thrown back to receive the mess, like an adjutant-bird swallowing a frog, and then they masticate with much apparent enjoyment. Sugar, treacle, curds, milk, oil, butter, preserves, and chutnees are served out to the more wealthy and respectable. ”

“ The mode of cultivation is similar to what is pursued in Sumatra, and so well described by Marsden. A small spot is cleared of jungle, and when the soil is exhausted of its primeval richness, is deserted for another, which again in turn is neglected, and returns to its wild state. The rice produced is of excellent quality, and of a smaller grain than the Java rice we have with us. It is very white and of excellent flavor, and I am inclined to think is the ‘Padi ladang,’ or rice grown on dry ground. ”

“ The crop soon springs up, a brilliant green, about as high as barley, but with an ear more resembling oats, and in seven or eight weeks is ready to be harvested. Boiled rice, with some curried33 vegetable or coco-nut, just to give it a flavor, is the staple food all over Ceylon among the natives—two meals a day, sometimes in poorer agricultural districts only one; a scanty fare, as their thin limbs too often testify. They use no bread, but a few cakes made of rice-flour and ghee and the sugar of the chágeri palm. ”

“ Wild rice swells more than cultivated rice in cooking. It [405] is often moistened with six times its bulk in water. The kernels are about six times as long as thick and in cooking the ends curl backward to meet in the center, thus differing from Oryza sativa, the white man’s rice. The proper way to cook it Indian fashion is with deer broth and season with maple sugar. Wild rice cooked with wild fowl takes away the muddy or wild taste and is highly prized by those whites who know its qualities. ”