Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/330



Girls marry in Acheh at an earlier age than perhaps in any other Mohammedan country of the Eastern Archipelago.

We meet indeed in all such countries cases of what is called in Java kawin gantung, where children are united in wedlock in form only, but the actual consummation of their marriage (Jav. němoʾaké) is deferred to a maturer age. Examples of this occur in Acheh also; it is then said that the husband "is only married and does not yet frequent the house". In Acheh, however, girls of 8 to 10, nay even of 7 years of age are actually handed over to their husbands, even where the latter are grown up or elderly men. So universal is this custom, that parents whose daughter at the age of 8–10 years does not occasionally share her husband's bed are greatly concerned thereat, unless there are spe-specialspecial [sic] reasons for her not doing so.

Such a reason would be, for instance, that the girl is the daughter of a sayyid and thus may wed none other than a sayyid. As these Mohammedan nobility are not very numerously represented in Acheh, and as it is an exceptional occurrence for a girl to leave her parents' gampōng to follow her husband, her high birth may sometimes compel a girl to wait for years for a husband, or even to become an old maid, a class that is, apart from such cases, almost unknown in the Native world. Or else it may happen that the daughter of some chief of note is formally married to the son of another chief, but the great distance of their homes from one another, and perhaps also small local