Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/229



The calendar of religious festivals is the same among the Achehnese as with the Malays and other Mohammedans; they adopt the lunar year of 354 days as a basis. They employ this same year with its lunar months as a measurement of time for all the ordinary purposes of life. Some of the names, however, which they give to the months differ from the Arabic and are borrowed rather from customary observances belonging peculiarly to those months. Many of them are also called by the Arabic names pronounced in the Achehnese fashion; these are universally understood by the well-educated. We shall begin by giving a concise list of these names with explanatory notes.