The origin of rice

At a Glance

• Central figures: Thakur Jiu, the supreme creator; Pilchu Haram and Pilchu Budhi, the first man and woman; the haso bird who carried the first grain; and the earth itself, which had to learn how to hold it.
• Setting: The Santhal heartland of what is now Jharkhand and West Bengal, in the oral tradition of the Santhal people; the story is told at Sohrai and at the first cooking of new rice after harvest.
• The turn: After Thakur Jiu made the world and the first people, the earth produced only roots and wild fruit - no grain grew, and Pilchu Haram and Pilchu Budhi were hungry in a way that roots could not fix.
• The outcome: Rice came down from the sky in the beak of a small bird, was planted by the first woman in wet earth near a river, and took hold - becoming the food that separated bare survival from a life worth singing about.
• The legacy: The Santhal practice of offering the first portion of new rice to Thakur Jiu before any person eats, and the custom of leaving unharvested grain at the field’s edge for birds.

Pilchu Budhi squatted by the river and dug up a root with her fingers. She cleaned it in the water and bit into it. It was bitter. She ate it anyway. This was the fifth root she had eaten that day, and none of them were enough. She looked at Pilchu Haram, who was breaking open a wild fruit against a stone. The juice ran down his wrist. He licked it and said nothing. There was nothing to say. They had the earth, the water, the trees Thakur Jiu had made for them, and every day they ate what they found. Every day they were still hungry when the sun went down.

The world was new. The tortoise still held it on its back. The rivers ran clean and the forests were thick, but the ground gave only what it gave - tubers, wild yam, the small hard fruits of the sal tree. Pilchu Haram and Pilchu Budhi did not know there was anything else. They did not know what rice was. Nobody did.

The Hunger That Roots Could Not Fix

They tried everything. Pilchu Haram climbed trees for fruit and came down scraped and empty-handed more often than not. Pilchu Budhi learned which roots were safe and which made the stomach cramp. She learned the mushrooms that grew after rain and the ones that killed. They ate leaves when there was nothing else. They ate bark.

But their bodies wanted something they could not name. A fullness. A warmth that stayed in the belly through the night. The roots passed through them and they woke hungry. The fruits gave sweetness but not weight. Pilchu Budhi pressed her hand to her stomach and felt it ask for something that did not yet exist on the surface of the earth.

She went to Marang Buru, the great hill, and sat at its base and spoke aloud to Thakur Jiu.

You made us. You made the water and the tortoise and the crab and the earth on the tortoise’s back. You made the trees and the roots. But we are hungry. We are always hungry. Is this what you made us for?

She waited. The wind moved through the sal trees. A lizard crossed the stone near her foot. Nothing answered.

The Haso Bird

Three days later a bird came down. It was small - not a kite, not a crow, not any of the large birds that Pilchu Haram could name. It was a haso, a finch-like thing with a brown back and a white throat, and it landed on the ground near the river where Pilchu Budhi washed the roots every morning.

In its beak it held a single grain. White, hard, smaller than a fingernail. The bird set it down on the wet mud and flew back up.

Pilchu Budhi picked it up. She turned it over. She did not know what it was. She put it between her teeth and bit. It cracked. Inside was a taste she had never tasted - faint, starchy, clean. Not sweet like fruit. Not bitter like root. Something in between, something that her stomach recognized before her mouth did.

The bird came back. It dropped another grain. Then another. Pilchu Budhi gathered them in her palm - seven grains, then twelve, then a small handful. The bird kept going up and coming back. By the time the sun moved to the middle of the sky, Pilchu Budhi had two handfuls.

Pilchu Haram came from the forest and found her sitting by the river with the grains in her lap.

What is that?

I do not know. A bird brought them.

He picked one up and looked at it. He put it in his mouth. He chewed slowly. His face changed. Something in his jaw loosened - not just the chewing, but the set of it, the clench that had been there since the first morning of the world.

Wet Earth

Pilchu Budhi did not eat all the grains. This was the important thing. She could have. Pilchu Haram could have. Two handfuls between two hungry people would have been gone in a moment. But she looked at the wet mud where the bird had first set the grain down, and she saw something - the way the mud held the shape of the grain, the small impression it left. She pushed one grain into the mud with her thumb. Then another. Then a row of them along the riverbank where the water kept the earth soft.

She did not know the word for planting. There was no word for it yet. She was making the word by doing the thing.

They waited. The rains came - Thakur Jiu sent them, or the sky sent them, or they came because the tortoise shifted and the rivers rose. The grains split open in the mud. Green shoots came up, thin as threads, trembling in the water. Pilchu Budhi watched them every day. She pulled the weeds that grew around them. She kept the water flowing. Pilchu Haram built a low wall of stones to keep the wild pigs out.

The stalks grew tall. The heads filled with grain - not seven grains, not twelve, but hundreds on each stalk, heavy and bending. When the wind moved through them they made a sound like rain on leaves, but drier. Pilchu Budhi stood at the edge of the field - the first field - and listened to that sound, and her stomach did not hurt.

The First Cooking

She cut the stalks with a sharp stone. She spread them on a flat rock in the sun. When the husks dried she rubbed them between her palms and blew the chaff away. The white grain underneath was clean and hard.

She put it in water over fire. Pilchu Haram watched the water turn cloudy. The grains softened. They swelled. The smell that rose from the pot was the first smell of cooked rice in the world, and neither of them had a name for it yet, but their mouths filled with water.

Pilchu Budhi did not serve it immediately. She took a portion - the first portion - and set it on a sal leaf at the base of Marang Buru. For Thakur Jiu. For whatever had sent the bird. Then she and Pilchu Haram ate.

The rice sat in their stomachs the way no root ever had. Heavy, warm, and staying. They slept through the night without waking. In the morning the hunger was not gone, because hunger does not leave the living, but it was smaller. It was the right size.

Grain at the Edge

Pilchu Budhi kept back seed for the next planting. She also left a portion of the harvest standing at the edge of the field - unharvested stalks, still heavy with grain. For the haso bird. For any bird. The grain had come from the sky in a beak, and the sky would always get its share.

The Santhal still do this. At the edge of the paddy, after harvest, stalks stand. Birds come and take what they take. The first rice cooked from new grain goes to Thakur Jiu before anyone eats. The manjhi says the words. The portion is set out. Then the village sits down together, and the rice is warm, and for that night, the hunger is the right size.