Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/404

 expression of ill-temper, but the means used to terminate a position which has become impossible, the permission given by the law to pronounce three ṭalāqs all at the same time and thus make the separation at once irrevocable seems to have} been made use of from the earliest times. Thus arose the idea popular in Acheh, that a divorce is necessarily composed of three parts.

There are two different ways of pronouncing the ṭalāq in Acheh. Some take three fragments of ripe betelnut (lhèë kraʾ pineung masaʾ) and hand them over one by one with a kind of dignified anger to the wife with the words "one taleuëʾ, two taleuëʾs, three taleuëʾs, thou art to me but as a sister in this world and the next ." Thereupon they give notice of the dissolution of the marriage to the teungku. The idea of divorce is thus intimately connected in the minds of women with these three pieces of betelnut. When particularly angry with her husband a woman will ask him to give her "the three bits of betelnut."

Others, however, betake themselves to the teungku of a neighbouring gampōng, and charge him with the task of giving notice in writing in their name to the authorities of the gampōng that they have pronounced the threefold ṭalāq. This notification, called surat taleuëʾ is addressed to "the Teungku, the Keuchiʾ and elders of the gampōng." It is wrapped in a cover of fine cloth costing about two dollars, called lapéʾ surat.

Recall (rujuʾ) is thus as a rule excluded under this method. It occasionally happens that a man says in anger to his wife: "I divorce you ," adding no further words, and afterwards repents of what he has done. In such a case most are aware that a remedy exists, since the three pieces of betelnut have not been employed, but as a rule they have to go in the first place to an ulama to ask him to explain in what that remedy consists. After enquiry, he declares that in the case in question only one ṭalāq has "fallen ," and that what has been done