Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/54

 the Sultan of Acheh. These wild denizens of the woods, however, in spite of all efforts, refused either to speak or eat and finally starved themselves to death.

In Achehnese writings and also in the speech of everyday life, rough clownish and awkward people are compared with the Mante. The word is also used in the lowlands as a nickname for the less civilized highlanders, and is applied in the same sense to the people of mixed descent on the West Coast.

Another contemptuous appellation of the West Coast people is aneuʾ jamèë (descendants of strangers or guests), or aneuʾ Rawa, (people from the province of Rawa), to which latter nickname the epithet "tailed" (meuʾiku) is also added. That these tailed or tail-less strangers contributed their quota to the composition of the Achehnese race is as little doubted as that the multitude of Klings (Kléug, ureuëng dagang ) in Great Acheh and on the East Coast have brought more half-caste progeny into the world than now commands recognition as such. There have been within the memory of man a large number of Klings in the highlands of Great Acheh (XXII Mukims) living entirely as Achehnese and engaged in agriculture. There were even gampōngs, such as Lam Aliëng, the entire population of which consisted of such hybrid Klings. In Great-Acheh the word ureuëngdagang = stranger is employed without any further addition to indicate a Kling.

The shares contributed by all these foreign elements and also the Arabs, Egyptians and Javanese are rightly regarded as having a merely incidental influence on the Achehnese race. In the capital and the coast towns of tributary states, they form an item of greater importance, for it is precisely the most influential families that are of foreign origin. All the holy men and most of the noted scholars of the law in Acheh were foreigners. So too with many great traders, shahbandars, writers and the trusted agents of princes and chiefs; nay, the very line of kings which has ruled with some interruptions since 1723 is according to tradition of Bugis origin.

Slaves are a factor of importance in the development of the Achehnese race. Most of these slaves come from Nias (Niëh), whence they