Ngarawunan and Pamageran: Reading the Cultural Landscape through the Relation of Settlements-Agriculture-Forest in Kasepuhan Ciptagelar Community

Abstract

Kasepuhan Ciptagelar community is a society that holds the padi-culture until now. Ciptagelar community respects the paddy and believes it as an entity that has a soul. This belief is manifested in every routine activity and ritual related to paddy. Some of these activities are namely ngarawunan and pamageran. They became a background for the formation of a cultural landscape in Kasepuhan Ciptagelar. Both ngarawunan and pamageran are rituals that have impact on the protection of the agricultural environment. The event of ngarawunan involves landscape relation among settlements - dry paddy field (huma) - wet paddy field (sawah). Whereas the event of pamageran involve the relation of settlement - dry paddy field - forest. Both contain local knowledge that full of meaning. How do they build a cultural landscape in Kasepuhan Ciptagelar? This article is written based on the results of research with qualitative-inductive methods through an ethnographic-participatory paradigm. The result of this research indicated that the relations between two events in the agricultural environment of dry-wet paddy field with settlement and forest establish the spatial concept as a paddy cultural landscape. Ngarawunan and pamageran events have mutual coexistence. The combination of the two basic mentalities of dry-wet paddy field community, especially the wet paddy filed in the ngarawunan shows the spatial concept without borders. Meanwhile, the mentality of the dry field community in pamageran presents the concepts of boundary or territory. Both are side by side and complement each other harmoniously. These original spatial concepts which eventually have become the indigenous spatial concept of Kasepuhan Ciptagelar community is still sustained up to present.