Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/255

 indigestion during this month, or that in spite of the large share that falls into the hands of the youthful hordes that lurk in the vicinity, many apam-cakes have in the end to be thrown away.

The story goes that once on a time a certain Achehnese, possessed by curiosity as to what befalls man in the tomb, and especially as to the investigations of the angels of the grave, Munkar and Nakir, and the punishments they are supposed to inflict, feigned death and was buried alive. He was soon subjected by the two angels to an enquiry as to his faith and works, and as he was found wanting in many respects, they began to smite him with their iron clubs. None of the blows, however, reached him. Something that he could not clearly distinguish in the darkness of the tomb, but which seemed to resemble the moon in its circular form, interposed itself as a shield and warded off the blows.

He contrived to work his way out of his narrow prison and hastened to his relatives, who received him with amazement. After relating his adventures he came to know to what he had to attribute his merciful deliverance from flagellation by the ghostly clubs. At the very moment when the moon-shaped shield was giving him its shelter, the members of his family were in the act of preparing for a kanduri the apam cakes, which are in fact round like the moon.

Thus it became a certainty that apam-cakes exercise a specially favourable influence on the fortunes of the dead. Such is said to be the origin of the Achehnese custom of baking apam cakes and distributing them as kanduri in the 7$th$ month of the year in the interest of their ancestors and deceased relatives,

Besides this great general feast two other customs of the Achehnese find their explanation in this legend, viz. 1° a domestic kanduri apam held on the seventh day after the death of any person and 2° a similar feast on the occurrence of an earthquake, which is supposed to have a peculiarly discomposing effect on the material remains of the deceased.

We may let the details of this explanation of the kanduri apam pass for what they are worth. At the same time it is quite conceivable that the custom had its origin in the worship of the dead; and a certain connection between the shape of the cakes which form the offering and some now forgotten notions connected with the moon is at least not impossible.