Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/148

 It may be seen from what has been just said, that illicit intercourse is usually treated in Acheh as a private rather than a public breach of law and order.

2°. The ulèëbalangs are quite ready to punish the offence of dina, even when no one has complained of it, provided no disagreeable consequences result to themselves or their friends. Here again their action is dictated not so much by a wish to maintain law, order and morality as to enlarge the profits of their privy purse.

Occasion for such interference especially arises when the pregnancy of an unmarried woman (the most unequivocal tanda of all) becomes publicly known. The causer of the pregnancy is traced down and the guilty parties reminded by the ulèëbalang that they are really liable to the penalty of death (by suffocation and drowning), but at the same time given to understand that the affair can be settled by payment of a certain fine, provided that the tanda disappears. The fine is generally paid and abortion procured at the command of the ulèëbalang, or else the latter (and this often happens) compels the guilty parties fo wed one another.

Artificial abortion is of the commonest occurrence in Acheh, both in and out of wedlock, and is especially resorted to in order to destroy that tanda of illicit intercourse which is the foremost means of proof prescribed by the adat.

Even where the guilty parties are unable to pay the fine, the ulèëbalang seldom exacts the extreme penalty of the law. He prefers to punish them by incorporating them among his followers as servants without pay (ureuëng salah), a step which is often accompanied by a compulsory marriage between the parties.

The rakans, or followers of the ulèëbalang, sometimes try to catch couples in forbidden amours, in order to hale them before the ulèëbalang, who squeezes them to the limit of their paying capacity by threats of other punishments. Nay, reliable witnesses declare that in the highlands especially, the rakans of the chiefs, in order to increase these fines (a share of which they receive for their trouble) have women in their service who make it their business to entrap men into quite innocent conversations in lonesome places. The woman can easily get the man to sit down by her for a moment, a thing quite feasible owing to the comparative freedom of intercourse between the sexes in Acheh. Then the rakans rush up to them, tear off a portion of the clothing