Java has its own name for this cluster and its own use for it. When Kartika reaches about fifty degrees above the horizon, the seventh season of the pranata mangsa farming calendar has begun, and rice seedlings move from the nursery beds out to the fields. That’s not folklore standing in for a calendar; it’s a calendar, read off the sky, and it worked for centuries before anyone printed one. The same seven stars turn up in the story of Jaka Tarub as seven maidens who came down to bathe, which is why they’re still invoked at Javanese weddings on the night of midodareni.
