Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/150

 means are put to death for such offences, while others are heavily fined.

To ensure the payment of the fines in such cases a peculiar method of compulsion is employed, called langgéh umòng or the "excommunication of the rice-fields." The ulèëbalang causes a stake to be fixed in the rice-field of the guilty party, with the white spathe of a young cocoanut palm fixed to its upper end. From that time forth it is forbidden the owner to till his rice-field until the ulèëbalang is pleased to remove this token.

Such removal, however, does not take place until the case is settled, i.e. until the owner as it were redeems his right of possession by a money offering. Where he is unable or disinclined to do this, the excommunication lasts sometimes for years. The ulèëbalang proceeds gradually to have the field tilled by his servants or (as a sort of feudal service) by his subjects, or else by private contract in consideration of ½, the nett produce (mawaïh). After some years it passes irretrievably into his possession.

This langgéh umòng takes place when the offender has been guilty of striking (be it even on strong provocation) a member of the ulèëbalang's family, or lost a weapon entrusted by the chief to his charge or the like. Wilful provocation is often given in order to increase the cases of confiscation and more than one of the ulèëbalangs has the name of being "very clever in annexing rice-fields."

With the daily life of the gampōng in the narrower sense of the words the ulèëbalang has little to do. Even the meulangga described above (pp. 77 et seq.) is carried out without his intervention. He must however be consulted in certain cases of change of residence and of alienation of rice-fields.

Changes of residence are opposed as much as possible by the heads of the gampōng, and as good as forbidden in the case of females. For changes of abode on grounds recognized by the adat, e. g. in order to exercise personal supervision over a part of the paternal inheritance situated elsewhere, permission is required from the keuchiʾs both of the gampōng vacated and of that where it is intended to reside.

Where however the cause of the removal lies in the fact that the would-be emigrant has always lived on bad terms with his fellow-villagers, his rice-field in his former gampōng remains his own property, but he is not permitted to take his house with him; this is confiscated by the ulèëbalang.