Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/282

 localities give to this constellation the various names of "plough" (wěluku or wělajar), "roebuck" (kidang), "village schoolmaster" (guru desa) and kukusan, the familiar conical basket in which rice is cooked by steaming. For the Achehnese, this constellation which they call "the Three Stars" (bintang lhèë), has a subsidiary meaning. They say that when the first of the three stars in the girdle of Orion shows brightest, the padi must be sown in the commencement of the time of the year recognized as seedtime. If the central one is the most brilliant, it should be sown in the middle of this period; if the most easterly, at the end. They also believe that a line joining the three stars exactly indicates the kiblat, or direction of Mekka, to which attention has to be paid in the performance of prayers. This latter idea also prevails in Java.

Venus is also tolerably familiar to the Achehnese, though the uneducated people regard her morning and evening appearances as two distinct stars. The learned men of the gampōng know better; they call her in both cases the "group of nine stars," asserting that if one looks at Venus through a silk handkerchief (the equivalent of a telescope among Achehnese astronomers), one may clearly behold nine stars. The common folk call the morning star bintang Timu (Eastern Star) and the evening star the star of the deer (rusa), or of the thieves (panchuri), since her uprising is the signal for both of these to go forth and seek their living.

The takat simalam or "sign of the night" is not, any more than the star of the deer and thieves, employed by the Achehnese in their computation of the seasons.

The same is true of the Southern Cross, which is called "the Skate" (bintang paròë) and of some few other constellations which are distinguished by separate names in Achehnese.

The great regulator of the seasons in Acheh is, however, the Scorpion (bintang kala); the Pleiades, which the Achehnese call "the group of seven stars" (bintang tujōh) or "many men" (ureuëng le), play a supplementary part.

We may here mention, though it does not tend much to the eluci-