Japanese Journal of Southeast Asian Studies

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This study describes the plowless agriculture characteristic to the tuber and rice culture of the trans-equatorial zone. Although various types of plow and harrow are in use today, their introduction is rather late. In Java the plow came into general use in the Dutch time, even though it is mentioned in epigraphs and illustrated in the caryings of the eighth to ninth century. Common cultivation technology before the Dutch period presumably consisted of tillage by digging stick and paddle-shaped hoe, weed cutting by use of a long knife. and soil preparation by buffalo or cattle-trampling. This surmise is based on the fact that these technologies and tools are still in popular use in Malaisia, the trans-equatorial zone from Madagascar, through Indonesia, to Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia. Together with these ancient traditions, ancestor souls and earth spirits are still often invoked for permission to open the land and for successful cultivation. Various rites, offerings and omens are observed, some of which are very similar in notion and form to those surrounding the worship of Osiris, the Egyptian god of crops, who returned after death. The concept of revival in funeral rites, megalithic altars and graveyards, some of which are similar to the terrace pyramids of ancient Egypt and Ziggurat of West Asia, are broadly distributed in Malaisia. The coexistence of plowless agriculture on one hand and traditions that originated in West Asia on the other suggest the possibility that a plowless zone and plow-cultivation zone have been in contact for several millenia. The author surmises that the trans-equatorial cultural zone was formed through this wide-ranging contact.
The oldest form of agriculture in the plowless zone is probably tuber-cropping. Its distribution in the Neolithic era would have been much broader than it is at present ...

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This report aims at clarifying the characteristics of rice culture conventionally and traditionally practiced in the Southeast Asian (SEA) archipelago and reconsidering the genealogy of rice culture from the viewpoint of historical development and distribution of farming practices and rice-growing techniques specific to the rice culture in the archipelago.
In Chapter 1, based on the regional variation in farming practices and rice-growing techniques, Asian rice culture is typologically classified into three major types, namely, the Indian type, the Chinese type, and the Malayan type. Most typical sequence of the practices and techniques for each type can be summarized as follows. (1)For the Indian type, a sequence consisting of land preparation with a plow and a harrow drawn by two cattle; broadcasting in dry fields; intertillage and weeding with a harrow; harvesting with a sickle having a long, crooked, serrated blade; and threshing by beating bundles of rice or by cattle-trampling. (2) For the Chinese type, land prepartation with a plow and a harrow drawn by one cattle; transplanting seedlings; manual weeding with various tools; harvesting with a sickle having a crescent-shaped blade; and threshing by beating. And (3) for the Malayan type, land preparation by various methods like puddling with an oar-shaped spade, cattle- trampling and human-foot-trampling, and a non-tillage method by which grasses are just cut with a long scythe-like tool; various methods of sowing or transplanting like dibbling with a stick, transplanting by punching holes with a short stick, and broadcasting in wet fields; manual weeding; harvesting panicles with a reaping knife; and threshing by foot-trampling or by pounding in a mortar. Based on the comparison of these ...

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