Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/278

 this latter case there was in the Sultan's time no sranta or proclamation by heralds.

In point of animation, however, this annual fair falls far behind the other two. On this occasion the object of the slaughter is not, as before the Puasa, to supply a store of cooked meat for a couple of weeks; and the buying of new clothes, which is universal at the end of the fasting month, is not customary in the month Haji.

The feast day itself is also a repetition on a much smaller scale of the urdòë raya Puasa. Very few indeed give a thought to religious exercises. As a general rule the men take their festival-bath in the morning at the meunasah, exchange handshakes with the friends whom they meet on the road, and pay some festal visits, at which the jeumphans are in due course served to them after the sirih. Some also visit their family burial-places.

Sacrifices are often offered at this feast by persons of means. The law teaches that a single head of small cattle (goats or sheep) may serve as a sacrifice for one person, while seven persons may, if they so prefer, join in offering a single head of large cattle (oxen or camels). In Acheh the genus bos is generally selected for the kurubeuën (from the Arab qurbān = sacrifice). As a rule oxen and not buffaloes are chosen in spite of the pretty general preference for the flesh of the latter. This is connected with the very widespread belief in the Eastern Archipelago, that an animal offered as a sacrifice will hereafter serve the sacrificer as a steed upon the "plain of the resurrection" (padang machha). A goat is too small for this purpose, and a buffalo, accustomed as it is to wallow in mud and shallow water might inconvenience his rider by walking with him into a river or ditch.

Whoever wishes to make sacrifice, usually hands over the animal destined for that purpose to an ulama, that nothing may be lacking to the proper ceremonial, and that he who makes the offering may thus be assured of attaining his purpose. The animal is killed under the ulama's supervision, and the flesh distributed among the people of the gampōng.

Before the coming of the Dutch to Acheh, great (though in many respects profane) kurubeuën feasts used to be held in the gampōng of Bitay. People assembled there in crowds from the 10$th$ to the 13$th$ of the month Haji, and even for a couple of days longer. They came from the capital and the whole of the surrounding district,—nay, all the sagis lent their contributions to this noisy gathering.