Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/233

 from Wèë 5 places onwards, we reach Jim; Jim is thus the letter of that year. To fix the year-letters on the memory they are formed into a single word with the help of vowels, thus ahjizdabuda.

The sequence of the month-letters is as follows:

To find the first day of the fasting month in the year 1309 we add the cypher of the year(3) to that of the fasting month, i. e. the 9$th$ of the year, which cypher is 5. This gives 8, and we now count off 8 weekdays beginning from Wednesday, which gives us Wednesday as the first day of the fasting month.

The month-cyphers are also formed into a word to assist the memory, thus zabjih waʾabdih zaʾajén.

In the cycle of eight years, as may be easily calculated, the 2$nd$, 5$th$ and 7$th$ years have an additional intercalary day (355 in all). The odd months have thirty and the even twenty-nine days, but in the intercalary years the 12$th$ month has also 30 days. In each year there is an excess of one 120$th$ of a day, but I have not been able to discover whether the Achehnese would correct this at the end of every 120 years by skipping a day.

Malay handbooks are also used for these calculations. These contain tables with all the requisite data, and an explanatory text to facilitate their use. Amateurs of science are in the habit of collecting one or more such treatises in a single volume along with sundry other data for fixing lucky days, months and hours, the good fortune that may be expected to attend a proposed marriage, and the like. To these are sometimes added theological treatises, and the whole forms what in Java is called a primbon or paririmbon, and at Batavia is known as a tip or japar sidéʾ (from Jaʾfar Çādiq, the reputed author of many astrological tables). The name in Acheh is téh, a corruption of the same Arabic word which is pronounced as tip by the Batavians. Its original meaning is "medical art".

Before proceeding to review the twelve months of the Mohammedan