Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/395

 Even where two free wives of the same husband differ somewhat in rank and birth, this difference has its effect on the social position of their children. Hence it is that the propagation of the race is so much, and we might almost add, so openly and shamelessly interfered with by causing of abortion or preventive checks.

It is especially those who cannot refrain from intercourse with their female slaves who make an extensive use of such methods. This does not alter the fact that the fear of failure in the efficacy of the drugs used withholds the majority from that concubinage with their slaves which is lawful according to the creed of Islam.

Where such concubinage takes place, the slave is called gundéʾ, and the legitimate results of the union are controlled by the Mohammedan law. The name gundéʾ is however often also applied, though incorrectly, to

1°. Women of very humble origin, who become (generally for only a short time) the wives of men of position such as ulèëbalangs or tuankus.

2°. Women who are kept in unlawful concubinage, over and above the lawful number of four. Few Tuankus, however, regard themselves as so far exalted above all consideration for law and morals as to admit of their forming such openly illicit connections. Children born of such unions, albeit not recognized or legitimized under any hukōm or adat, are still, under the name of aneuʾ gundéʾ, esteemed part of the family of their natural father, so long as he himself sets the example of so regarding them.

Persons of humbler rank sometimes indulge in plurality of wives when their means admit of such a luxury and the journeys to and fro between the abodes of their spouses do not prove too burdensome. As a rule, however, they do not choose two wives in the same gampōng, and thus the quarrels between rival consorts of the same husband are reduced to a minimum.

A great number of Achehnese, however, are practically monogamists. They only marry a second wife after the death of the first, or where incessant domestic quarrels necessitate a divorce. Various causes are assigned in explanation of this phenomenon, each of which perhaps lends its share towards producing it.

In the first place there is the husband's position in regard to his wife and her family, to whom he is as a rule under very great obli-