Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/241

 The mess is brought to the meunasah or sometimes to the junction of the gampōng-path with the main road. All who wish fall to and gormandize, generally to such an extent as to cause indigestion. The blessing of the bubur by a prayer, though common in Java, is not customary in Acheh. In neither country is the feast strictly limited to the 10$th$ of the month, but often extends some days beyond.

A further survival of the old commemoration of Ḥasan and Ḥusain is to be found in the fact that the first ten days of the month which bears their name are regarded as unlucky. On them no work of importance is begun, no marriage with a virgin consummated (for that would mean speedy separation or the death of one of the pair), no child circumcised, no rice sown or planted out.

The name "fire-month" (buleuën apuy) given to the Achura-month to account for these adat-rules is peculiarly Achehnese. It may be that there lurks here a further allusion to the dances of the Ḥasan-Ḥusain feasters round fires, as practised to this day in Trumon and in the Deccan.

2. Sapha (= Ṣafar) is also a month to be avoided for undertakings of weight.

The reason for this has been stated to be that in this month the fatal sickness of Mohammad, to which he succumbed in the third month of the year, first began to show itself. However that may be, the belief is universal in the Mohammedan world that Safar is pregnant with evil, and that one may feel very thankful when he reaches the last Wednesday of this month without mishap. This day nowhere passes wholly without notice.

In Acheh it is called Rabu Abéh, "the final Wednesday." Many take a bath on this day, the dwellers on the coast in the sea, others in the river or at the well. It is considered desirable to use for this bath water consecrated by contact with certain verses of the Qurān. To this end a teungku in the gampōng gives to all who ask slips of paper on which he has written the seven verses of the Qurān in which Allah addresses certain men with the word salām ("blessing" or "peace").