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How these conjectures sometimes originate and gain credit in Acheh may be illustrated by an experience of my own in that country. The well-known Teungku Kutakarang, an ulama and leader in war [died November 1895] upholds, among other still more extraordinary notions, the view that the Achehnese are composed of elements derived from three peoples, the Arabs, the Persians and the Turks. Both in conversation and in his fanatical pamphlets against the "Gōmpeuni" he constantly refers to this theory.
Though he has absolutely no grounds for this absurd idea, those who look up to him as a great scholar think that he must have a good foundation for it, and accept his ethnological theories without hesitation. While I was engaged in collecting Achehnese writings and was making special efforts to secure copies of one or two epic poems based on historic facts, an Achehnese chief suggested to me that I should not find what I wanted in these. He declared himself ready to write me out a short abstract of the history of Acheh containing a clear account of the origin of the Achehnese from Arab, Persian and Turkish elements! "Of this", said he, "you will find no mention in the poems you seek for".
The only fact that popular wisdom can point to as regards the Hindus, is that the inhabitants of the highlands of the interior are manifestly of Hindu origin, since they wear their hair long and twist it into a top-knot (sanggōy) on the back of the head in the Hindu fashion.
ManteThere are other stories in circulation about the Mante or Mantras[1], but these are equally undependable. They remind me of what I once heard said of the tailed Dyaks reputed to exist in Borneo; the existence of these people, my informant remarked, appeared quite probable from what one heard of them all over Borneo, but they always seem to live one day further inland from the point reached by the traveller.
These Mantes are supposed to go naked and to have the whole of their bodies thickly covered with hair, and are believed to inhabit the mountains of the XXII Mukims; but all our informants know them only by hearsay. One here and there will tell you that in his grandfather's time a pair of Mantes, man and wife, were brought captive to
- ↑ See also Van Langen's Atjehsch Staatsbestuur pp. 384–85.
