Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/370

 either dictate to the wali and the bridegroom what they have to say or else have themselves empowered by the wali and enter into the marriage contract as his wakil. This last method, which is adopted throughout the whole of the E. Indian Archipelago, is also the one most generally resorted to in other Mohammedan countries, as for example in Arabia. This is indeed what we should naturally expect, for under the first-named system there is much greater risk of the whole affair being upset by the inadvertence of one or other of the parties. Under the more usual method, on the other hand, the authorization of the official deputy by the wali (a proper formula for which the latter dictates, to make it easy for the former) is given before the marriage contract is concluded, so that this official wakil has to devote his attention to the bridegroom only. On the latter he impresses beforehand his comparatively simple duties. "So soon" (thus runs his lesson), "so soon as ever I have given utterance to the offer I shall pull your thumb" (which the official holds fast during the ceremony for this purpose) and then you must immediately repeat the words which I dictate".

Such is also the practice in Java; the formulas used on such occasions vary locally in sundry particulars, but are everywhere the same in essentials. Mr. van den Berg, who clearly made his first acquaintance with these matters quite recently from Winter's brochure and the dictionaries of de Wilde and Coolsma, draws therefrom the entirely