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‘Mitoni’: Javanese baby shower teeming with symbolism
There is a good reason on why the number seven keeps reappearing in the centuries-old mitoni.ritual of the Javanese baby shower.
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Blessed water: R. Ay Nusye Retnowati (left) pours water over her daughter-in-law, GKR Hayu, while GKR Hemas (right) looks on. 'Siraman' (shower) is an important part of the 'mitoni' ritual. (JP/Bambang Muryanto)
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KR Hayu, the fourth daughter of Sri Sultan Hamengku Buwono X, changed her wraparound cloth seven times in a mitoni ceremony (Javanese baby shower) at Kraton Kilen of the Yogyakarta Palace on June 18.
From the first to the sixth batik cloth, her eldest sister, crown princess GKR Mangkubumi, asked the audience, “Is it already appropriate?”
“Not yet!” the crowd answered.
Only after she had put on the seventh cloth with a striped pattern – symbolizing the vertical relationship between humans and the Creator as well as the horizontal ties among fellow humans – did the audience shout, “It’s appropriate!”
The procession, called pantes-pantes (propriety), is part of the two-hour mitoni ceremony Javanese moms-to-be go through as they reach the seventh month of their first pregnancy. The ceremony comprises of 19 stages ending in a feast. Each stage carries a symbolic message and prayer to God for the safe passage of the mother and her firstborn.
This tradition is said to originate in the period of King Jayabaya, who ruled the Kediri Kingdom in the 12th century, when Hindu culture was dominant. A royal couple, Sadiya and his wife Niken Satingkeb, after nine stillbirths, asked for guidance from the king on how to be blessed with a child. King Jayabaya, so the legend goes, ordered the couple to perform a ritual that later became known as mitoni or tingkeban, named after Niken Satingkeb.
Nine centuries later, many Javanese families, including the royal family of the Yogyakarta Palace, still carry out the mitoni ritual to express gratefulness to God and pray for the health of the mother and child.
