Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/46

 sometimes in proverbs and familiar sayings, but always and above all in the actual occurrences of daily life which appeal to the comprehension of all.

Speaking of Acheh only, there will be found described hereafter laws which control the relation of chief to subject, of man to wife and children, laws which everyone in Acheh observes and every village headman has at his fingers' ends; and yet of all these living laws no single written document testifies, though every single sentence of an Achehnese judge bears witness to their existence.

Such has been the case all over the East Indian Archipelago. Whoever would introduce by force an alteration in existing legal institutions found it necessary to reduce his innovation to writing, but those who were content to leave things as they were, seldom resorted to codification of the customary law. Whether changes such as these are abiding or disappear after a brief show of life, the writing remains as their witness; it is the life of the people alone that testifies of institutions which have withstood the attack of external change and modify themselves intrinsically by almost imperceptible degrees.

One might even assert that where codification of the customary law has been purposely resorted to (as in the undang-undang of certain Malay states) this embodiment in writing is a token that the institutions in question are beginning to fall into decay. Collections of documents of this sort offer to the conscientious enquirer a string of conundrums impossible of solution, unless he be thoroughly conversant with the actual daily life of native society, of the traditions of which such legal maxims form but a small part.

What we have said above perhaps renders it superfluous to add that