Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/323

 Besides the above, the latter dedicated certain rice-fields as waqf to meet the expenses of the annual kanduris of Teungku Anjōng, and also, it would seem, for the maintenance of some of the smaller chapels.

Generally, however, the Achehnese limit themselves as regards the making of waqf to copies of the Qurān and other religious books (kitabs) for chapels and schools and earthenware utensils and the like for mosques and meunasahs, to be used in the kanduris held therein.

Sale of ladangs is comparatively rare, owing to their remote situation, but it is otherwise in regard to wet rice-fields, gardens and courtyards. According to the adat, however, lands of these three descriptions may always be acquired by the owners of the adjoining lands for the price offered by another, a right not conferred by the Shafiʾite law.

For this reason the owner of such lands in Acheh is bound to notify his immediate neighbours of his intention to sell, nor may he complete the sale without their consent. Where two or more of the adjoining owners wish to exercise their right of acquisition, they must come to an arrangement with each other; this seems seldom to present any difficulty.

The sale is attended with some ceremony, the form of it being borrowed in part from the Mohammedan law, and in part from the adat. Some ten persons from the gampōngs of the purchaser and seller witness the formal offer and acceptance, and each receives for his trouble some tobacco-leaves (bakōng). The vendor first announces the sale, though it properly speaking still lacks its legal confirmation. "I have sold", he says, "my rice-field in district X to so-and-so for $ 100; let this be known to all present ." With this introduction he proceeds to make the offer (peusambōt): "I sell you the rice-field Y for the sum of $ 100.— ." The purchaser replies by the acceptance (sambōt) "I buy from you this rice-field for the sum of one hundred dollars ."

The same formalities take place at the sale of cattle. The seller of the cow or buffalo holds the leading-rope, which passes through the animal's nostrils, close up to the latter, whilst the purchaser grasps it lower down. The formula of the peusambōt and sambōt is the same