Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/379

 countries to arise at a very early age, and in Acheh one sees children whom we should deem of an age to be taken on the knee, making purchases in the market in the capacity of matrons!

Now as many of these girls have, whilst still unmarried, lost their fathers and grandfathers who are their proper walis, the Shafiʾite ritual conflicts with the Achehnese adat on this point. Means have however been found to reconcile this difficulty.

It is difficult to give a clear explanation of this expedient without once more digressing from our subject. As a matter of fact the Shafiʾite school permits its disciples to follow some other ritual in certain isolated cases. Such partial following of another school is called taqlīd i.e., clothing with authority. In Java, for instance, taqlīd is commonly resorted to in order to fix the qiblah (the direction in which the devout must turn when praying) since the rules of the Shafiʾite school are too strict to be carried out in actual practice. It is also customarily employed in the fulfilment of neglected religious duties on behalf of deceased persons. We should have looked to find in Van den Berg's Beginselen a discussion of this subject to which we might here refer, but we seek in vain for even the bare mention of the question.

We shall only mention here so much of the law as to this sort of taqlīd as is indispensable to our subject, for a full description would detain us too long ; we therefore merely quote such opinions of the teachers as are followed in actual practice at the present time.