Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/327

 same ceremonial manner as contracts for the sale of lands. It not unfrequently happens that a mortgaged piece of land remains so long in the hands of a single family that it comes to be regarded as its property, and the original transaction is in all good faith forgotten. This results in tedious lawsuits between the heirs of the original owners and those of the moneylenders.

Fruit-trees etc., held without any right of ownership over the ground on which they stand,—as for example when they grow on a padang or common or on the wakeuëh strip on each side of the river—may also be the subject of a contract of mortgage. The man who takes such gardens in pledge has of course no right to remove the trees.

We have seen that the rights of the owner of an umòng are limited during the musém luaïh blang by the fact that everyone is free to graze his cattle thereon. In addition to this privilege, everyone has a right to fish in any umòng in that "open" season, both with fish-traps and the fishing-rod. Even in the musém pichéʾ blang, during which the access of cattle to the rice-fields is so strictly forbidden, fishing with the rod on the umòng of others is allowed, but not the setting of fish-traps.

Fish-ponds (mòn) made by the owner on his own land are excepted from this permission, and it is likewise forbidden to catch fish with any other implement than rod and line in neuheuns or lhòms which others have constructed on the banks of creeks or rivers.

Mortgaging of such ponds or staked enclosures seems not to be customary, though they pass into the hands of others by sale and succession. It even occurs at times that a man sells his rice-field, yet retains his ownership of the fish-pond he has made there.

There remains one further point of interest with regard to the money-lending system of Acheh. The Achehnese contract of mortgage comprehends within itself a transgression of the rule of law prohibiting all usury (riba), a rule unconditionally insisted on in the teaching of Islam and much emphasized by every school. The popular conscience, however, finds this form of transgressing the commandment less repulsive than the direct covenant for interest on a sum of money lent. The receipt of goods in pledge does not excite even an outward show of aversion; pledging is in fact permitted, nor is this the only respect in which the adat of the country has somewhat modified the hukōm in practice. But where it is said of anyone that he "makes dollars yield interest" (peulaba reunggét, pubungòng reunggét, or pajōh bungòng