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of both man and woman and set this aside as "tanda." Where this is confirmed by the woman's "admission" that she has had prohibited intercourse with the accused, it becomes easy for the ulèëbalang to extort a fine from the victim of the trick.
Adat-punishments.In the case of those who are entirely without means, the adat is sometimes made to appear to have as its sole purpose the punishment of immorality. The following are among the punishments inflicted; fifty or more strokes of the lash inflicted by the rakans of the ulèëbalang, in the presence of a crowd of the fellow-villagers of the accused; holding up to public gaze for a few moments by suspension from a tree by a rope passed under the arms; exposure for a whole day to the sun; being tied up for a whole night in a place swarming with mosquitos or close to a nest of red ants etc.
There are no definite adat-rules in regard to all these punishments. They are applied at the whim of the ulèëbalang not only in the case of illicit intercourse but also of other favourite sins of the Achehnese, whether some sacred occasion or place has been thereby extraordinarily polluted, or where the offence has been perpetrated with outrageous shamelessness, or by persons who are specially obnoxious to the chiefs or whose misdeeds they do not feel bound to overlook.
For ill-treatment of women an adat punishment now little in vogue was formerly resorted to. The offender was set on a cow-buffalo and led round followed by a hooting and jeering crowd. The late chief of Lhōʾ-Kruët on the West Coast used to apply this punishment to all sorts of other offences, not excluding dina[1].
Imprisonment, generally in chains, serves less as a punishment than to accelerate the payment of a heavy fine, or to detain the prisoner for further enquiry when it is feared that he might otherwise make good his escape.
All acts are rigorously punished which in the opinion of ulèëbalangs or other chiefs amount to a slight upon the honour or dignity of themselves, the members of their families or their friends. Those who are without
- ↑ In Acheh and its dependencies, just as in other Mohammedan countries, arbitrary punishments are often elaborated and inflicted by the chiefs. Thus the present chief of Teunòm used often to cause adulterous lovers to be deprived of their virility by the objects of their passion. He also punished many transgressors of the law as to fasts by having them led about the country on all fours for some days with rings in their noses like buffaloes, and forcing them to eat grass.
