Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/83

 Arab, and in part—as with the line of princes who have now occupied the throne for more than a century and a half—of Bugis origin. The great literati or holy men were almost without exception foreigners, and the same is true of many of the rich traders and high officials. The Klings and Arabs settled in Acheh, nay even some of the slaves have after several generations become an integral part of the Achehnese people. From this it may be readily concluded that the four great tribes, while comprehending the whole of the Tunòng people, who owing to the nature of their environment were least of all exposed to foreign influence or admixture, never included all the Achehnese. This remains probable even in view of the indubitable fact that the tribal relations which did actually prevail, are in the lowlands fading away and gradually disappearing under the pressure of the superior power of the chiefs.

The slight information which we here furnish as to the four kawōms, their tradition and adat is from the nature of the subject merely preliminary, and will we hope be improved or better still completed by others.

All that can be gathered of the origin of the four kawōms or sukèës, even with respect to their names is thus to a hazardous degree mixed up with modern Achehnese philosophy and conjecture. These materials though they wear the outward appearance of having been handed down from distant ages, exhibit manifest traces of having been thought out in a period much too remote for accuracy from the origin of the tribes, or concocted to suit the real or supposed meanings of the names. The very circumstance that these kawōm-legends diverge as widely as the poles should cause us to abandon as hopeless the search among them for "germs of history."