9
short-lived period of prosperity of their kingdom, kept the trading ports within a wide compass in subjugation with their fleets, but never got any further in the control of the interior than the issue of a few edicts on paper.
We must not then allow ourselves to be misled by these edicts, valuable as they are as sources of information as to the history of the kings of Acheh. The danger of such error presents itself in two ways.
In the first place, the Achehnese himself, when questioned as to the institutions of his country, will refer with some pride to these documents, notwithstanding that most Achehnese have never seen copies of them and are almost entirely unacquainted with their contents.
The ordinary Achehnese does this, because all that recalls to him the greatness of his country is closely connected with the names of those very princes who are generally regarded as the authors of the sarakatas. He firmly believes that all that he reveres as the sacred institutions of his country (albeit not mentioned in a single one of the edicts) is adat[1] Meukuta Alam or at any rate adat pòten meureuhōm, "adat of defunct royalties", and he is convinced that information respecting them is of a certainty contained in some one or other of the sarakatas.
The Achehnese chiefs have a secondary aim when they refer with a certain emphasis to these edicts as the laws of Acheh. All that is contained therein respecting court ceremonial, festivals, religion etc., they regard with complete indifference; but every one of them is skilful in making quotations from the adats of the old sovereigns handed down in writing or by word of mouth, which may go to show that his power, his territory, or his privileges should in reality be much greater than what he enjoys at the present time.
The European who comes into contact only superficially with the native community, is too apt to think that the adat among them is an almost unchangeable factor of their lives, surrounded on every side with religious veneration. Yet it does not require much philosophic or historical knowledge to be convinced that such invariable elements subsist just as little in the native world as in our own, although among them the conscious reverence for all that is regarded as old and
- ↑ Adat is an Arabic word adopted in most Malayan languages. It means "custom", "usage", "customary law" as opposed to hukum or "religious law". (Translator).
