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feast (kanduri) consecrated with prayers. In the set speech in which the father abandons all direct interference with the concerns of his daughter for the remainder of her married life, he sums up all that she has received from him, so that no unpleasantness may arise on any subsequent distribution of her property. Either he or another in his name delivers himself somewhat as follows:—"The reason why I have summoned you hither, Teuku Keuchiʾ, Teungku and all ye elders, is that I have now "put forth" my daughter N; be this known unto all of you, O elders. What I have given her is as follows: a pair of anklets 6 bungkay in weight, one yōʾ of rice land, a pair of earrings, this house and all its equipment. This is what I wished to inform you of, be it known unto you all." The keuchiʾ replies in the name of the assembled company: "We have heard it."
Laba sihareukat.Just as all that the husband brings to the home of the pair, even in the form of presents to his wife, remains with few exceptions his own property, so the wife retains an indisputable right of ownership over all that she can show to have been brought thither by her. In districts where it is the custom for the wife to assist the husband in his employment, the property accumulated during the marriage by their respective toil is in the event of a divorce divided in equal shares between the man and the woman or their respective heirs. Where one of the two dies, the survivor obtains in addition to this half share his lawful portion of the heritable property, to which the other half of their common earnings is regarded as belonging. Thus we find in Acheh the same peculiarity that exists in Java and Madura[1]; and most Malayan countries, viz. that where the woman is the
- ↑ Van den Berg mentions this adat in his essay on the Afwijkingen pp. 474 et seq. In regard to this subject he makes fewer of the gross blunders into which he elsewhere falls, but here again he gives us nothing but what he has derived from books without a trace of "notes personally made by him." He might for instance have discovered by personal enquiry that the exceptions he mentions (Bantěn and a number of other places) are really no exceptions at all; the only reason why the saguna-sakaya or common earnings are not divided in these districts is that they have no existence, since the women there do not assist their husbands in their work. He might also have found out that the division in the proportion of 2 to 1, though of frequent occurrence, is by no means universal, since in many places it is the custom to enquire first into the circumstances, and then to decide what is the just proportion which each has earned. In Madiun for instance, division into equal parts is very customary. On page 477 Van den Berg makes the curious deduction that this adat is specially Javanese, because it is also to be met with in outlying Dutch possessions such as Southern Celebes."
