Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/293

 weather to recur after a definite number of keunòngs, and they generally guide their conduct accordingly.

There is a very widespread belief that if it begins to rain in any month before the keunòng, such rain will not prove continuous, but will pass off in mere showers. Should it however rain heavily on the day after the keunòng (ujeuën ateuëh keuneunòng = "the rain above the conjunction") then it is said that it will continue the whole month through.

We have now become acquainted with the Achehnese year as measured by seasons. This we shall now pass once more in review in order to examine its relations with Achehnese agriculture. With this in view, let us commence with keunòng 21, (February of our year) when the rice harvest generally ends and the musém luaïh blang begins.

What is known in Acheh as blang is a network of adjoining rice-fields, all those for instance which belong to one gampōng;—the "open fields" as we might call them. Lands which used to form rice-fields, but which have gradually been rendered too brackish for cultivation by the invasion of salt water, are also called "blang."

On the other hand, sawahs situated in swampy land are called simply paya (= "the swamp") or buëng in the specially swampy district known as the VII Mukims Buëng.

In the lowlands, where the whole country has been reclaimed by man, uncultivated fields or plains are seldom to be seen, but in the highlands there are many such. These are called padang, and belong like the blang to definite gampōngs, though the rights which those who live in their vicinity can exercise in them, are not confined to a single gampōng, but extend over the whole mukim.

The rice-fields (umòng) of the inhabitants of a given gampōng are thus usually to be found in the blang of that gampōng. When the rice-harvest is over, however, the whole blang becomes for the time more or less the common property of the gampōng, and every one may let