Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/130

 reasons because it greatly hampers the detection of crime, imposes impossible demands on witnesses and fails to take cognizance of historical changes.

As the Mohammedan law itself excludes on principle all intrinsic reform, rulers have everywhere found themselves compelled to provide a practical method of administering justice, and this they have done by constituting themselves the judges in all cases, following partly the prevailing custom of the country and partly their own inclination.

Respect for the admittedly perfect religious law (described in self-justification as too good for modern society) made a twofold concession desirable; first the admission of an appeal to the divine law, of which license it is well known that advantage will hardly ever be taken, and secondly the handing over to the ḳādhi of the decision of such cases as are more especially regarded as being of a religious nature, including the law relating to families.

The first of these two concessions is wanting in the judicial institutions of most peoples of the Indian Archipelago. In its place it is represented as being God’s will that the adat (conceived as the ancient law of the land in the broadest sense of the word, altered but little by the spirit of Mohammedanism) and the hukōm or religious law should govern side by side, though in practice the former plays by far the larger part.

But in Acheh even the jurisdiction in matters affecting the family has not been entirely made over to the kali. The latter's most usual duties are:

a. The declaration of the pasah (fasch), the judicial dissolution of a marriage at the instance of one of the parties. Even this is only done by the kali by the authority of the ulèëbalang specially given in each case. The usual recompense to the kali for such a sentence is four dollars. To this is sometimes added a handsome fee for the ulèëbalang, especially when the grounds of a woman's request for pasah are of doubtful sufficiency.

b. Acting as the wali of maidens who wish to get married, and whose