Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/163

 maintained. Yet it was only a few of the dependencies that dared to refuse payment of the wasé (the sultan's share of the harbour dues) though they managed to reduce the amounts demanded by bargaining. The sums collected by expeditions sent round for this purpose, together with the sadly dwindled harbour dues of Banda Acheh, formed the principal sources of revenue of the later sultans. Much of this however stuck to the fingers of collectors and administrators.

The Achehnese slave-traders were until quite recently the terror of Nias and the adjacent islands.

In oral as well as written tradition we find occasional mention of the sultan's seven prerogatives. They alone had the power to inflict certain punishments, five in number, which could never be imposed by ulèëbalangs, viz. the lopping off of hands, impaling, a sort of crucifixion which consisted in the exposure to view of the dead body of the offender nipped in a cleft tree-trunk, the slicing off of flesh from the body of the condemned (sayab), and the pounding of the head in a rice-mortar (sròh). The privilege of firing a cannon at sunset, and the right of being accosted with the expression dèëlat completes the tale of the seven privileges. It is to be observed that the two last-named are of little real importance, while the special powers of punishment reserved to the sultans were, it is true, seldom or never exercised by ulèëbalangs, but very rarely also by the sultans themselves, if we except the occasional lopping off of the hands of thieves.

To these seven privileges may be added the right of of coining money, which was also reserved to the sultans.

The obligation laid on the ulèëbalangs by some of the edicts, of reporting to the sultan the sentences imposed by them, and bringing before him all suits in which strangers (including Achehnese from other ulèëbalangships) were concerned, always remained a dead letter. Such reports were never made, the sentences of ulèëbalangs were on the same footing as those of independent chiefs, and cases affecting Achehnese not subject to their jurisdiction were either decided by them in consultation with their fellows, or remained unsettled and gave rise to quarrelling and strife. How the law stood in the case of real foreigners may best be learnt from the common saying of the Achehnese to