68
Every keuchiʾ has at least one such subordinate, and where he exercises control over more than one gampōng, one for each gampōng. The position taken by the wakis greatly depends on their personal characteristics. Some are not much more than the messengers of their keuchiʾs, while others actually take the place of the father of the community in many cases, or even govern him to some extent through their greater strength of character.The profits enjoyed by them may be described as the gleanings of those which the keuchiʾ reaps from his office.
In the dialects of the highlands (XXII Mukims) and of the VII Mukims Buëng[1], which as we have seen have so much in common with the Tunòng, the father of the community is called waki and his subordinate keuchiʾ, or geuchiʾ as it is there pronounced.
Authority of the keuchiʾ.It is the duty of the keuchiʾ, assisted by the other authorities of the gampōng whom he can always summon to his aid, to maintain to the best of his ability the good order and safety, and also the material prosperity of his domain. Of this prosperity abundance of population is regarded as an important factor; and thus a close supervision on the part of the "father" over the comings and goings of his "children", so far as these might tend to dispersal of the united body, is considered as amply justified.
The keuchiʾ cannot without difficulty prevent a full-grown man from straying away as a pepper-planter to the East or West Coast or elsewhere, however much he may deplore the gap caused by his absence. But the wanderer must leave his wife at home; the adat will not permit her to accompany her husband except in performing the pilgrimage to Mecca or in the rare cases where the wife, after due deliberation of the two gampōngs concerned, leaves her own house and gampōng for that of her husband.
Change of residence of a family to another gampōng does not take place without the consent of the keuchiʾ, which is equally required for a strange household to establish themselves for the first time in his gampōng.
No marriage can be concluded without the consent of the keuchiʾ. Only where the population is superabundant and the supply of marriageable girls and women without husbands by no means excessive, will
- ↑ In Buëng we find a further peculiarity. Under each imeum of a mukim there are exactly four wakis or fathers of communities, each of whom with his gampōng is responsible for one-fourth of the common interests of the district, such as repair of mosques etc.
