Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/390

 marriage contract. The ordinary villager, or indeed any native who has not studied, knows naught of the rules of the Law in regard to the contract. He places himself entirely in the hands of the official who concludes it; when for example, the latter, after the ratification of the contract proper, says to him: "You will now surely repeat the taʾlīq according to the good adat which all men follow", few bridegrooms would so much as conceive the possibility of refusing this request.

Some, part pedantic, part overscrupulous pangulus have of late abandoned this admirable adat, but in every place where I ascertained the non-existence of the custom (and I have always made a special task of investigating such cases) I have met persons who could still remember when the janjining ratu or taʾléʾ was universally practised.

In the Residency of Batavia and also in Malay countries, where submission to the princes and their representatives is much less slavish than in Java, the free voluntary declaration is always observed in form, but the advice of the official marriage-maker combined with the layman's ignorance of the law gives rise to a kind of restraining force that serves to maintain the adat.

We now see clearly that this taʾlīq-adat, so far from being exceptional, is deeply rooted in the necessity for rendering the position of the married woman more favourable than it is under the Mohammedan law, while yet avoiding as far as possible all conflict with that law. However open to dispute may be our conjecture that this adat was introduced by the pioneers of Islam in the East Indies, we may rest assured that the almost universal acceptance of the custom was due in each instance to the fact that it harmonized with the requirements of the people.

I say almost universal acceptance, and in doing so I intend not only to draw attention to the exceptions which are everywhere made in favour of persons of rank or teachers of the law, in whose case malevolent desertion or ill-treatment of a wife is not supposed possible, but also to put in strong relief the fact that the adat is entirely lacking in some good Mohammedan countries of the Archipelago,

The most unequivocal confirmation of our explanation of the acceptance of this adat is to be found in the fact that it supplies a satisfactory reason for the absence of the taʾlīq from among the essential adjuncts of marriages in some countries. This will be at once recognized, on the mere mention of their names by every one who has any knowledge of the social system of the two principal countries which are without