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extended sense of a tribe (kawōm), this is taken to include all the descendants of a common ancestor in the male line, however far apart from one another they may happen to reside. And this is no new conception, nor should it in all probability be ascribed to the influence of Mohammedanism alone, though no doubt greatly strengthened thereby; most of the old Achehnese adats and institutions bear witness to and confirm this patriarchal origin.
Thus a kawōm[1] includes all whose pedigrees followed up in the male line coincide in a single ancestor. Even where the line cannot be clearly traced (and few Achehnese know their descent for more than three generations) they still hail one another as fellow-tribesmen as long as the feeling survives that they are connected in the manner indicated with a common ancestor.
Van Langen[2] has very properly represented the division of the Achehnese people into kawōms as the ancient and patriarchal, as opposed to the territorial distribution, the latter being a more recent and higher phase of the political development of Acheh. Even now, after government and judicial administration have been for centuries based on the territorial distribution, the kawōms, those genealogical units which flourished at a period when might was superior to right and when there was no central authority controlling parties, have by no means lost all significance.
In connection with this fact it follows naturally that the kawōms have maintained most force in those parts of the country where the political development is most backward, as in the Tunòng (the XXII Mukims), in Pidië (Pedir) and in the VII Mukims Buëng (the part of the XXVI Mukims that has most in common with the highlands in language and manners). In the lowlands on the other hand, and especially in the neighbourhood of the Dalam, where blood-feuds (bila) are not so much the order of the day, and where the upholders of territorial authority depend less on their kawōm than on their own energy and other personal characteristics, the distribution into kawōms
- ↑ From the Arab. kaum = people, tribe.
- ↑ In his Atjehsch Staatsbestuur, pp. 384–390. The theory there propounded (p. 387) that this distribution was introduced on a sudden during the reign of a certain Sultan of the 16th century is unworthy of acceptance and is also at variance with tradition. The transition took place naturally, growing with the growth of the people. What the writer puts forward as Achehnese tradition is to an undesirable degree mixed up with modern conjectures and the theories of certain Achehnese.
