Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/88

 marked in ancient times, is to be found in the adat-rule, often transgressed yet always recognized in theory, that marriage while permitted between members of the first three confederated tribes is forbidden between these and the Imeum Peuët.

Had the territorial chiefs succeeded fully in carrying out their purpose, such a prohibition would of course have lost all its force. Indeed, where the kawōms have been constrained to live at peace with one another and to submit their disputes to the arbitration of third parties, there has been an end of all impulse to such a social separation, which is besides opposed to the teaching of Islam. It is, however, equally certain that such severance and isolation were very much more prevalent prior to the time when the ulèëbalangs and other chiefs began to exert control over all alike without distinction of kawōm.

Free intermarriage between the three allied kawōms dates of course from their federation.

It does not require a great stretch of the imagination to realize the peculiar consequences of free intermixture of the kawōms, where the tribal distribution still retains its true significance.

We have already seen that the adat-prohibition just noticed is very frequently transgressed. When once the wall of separation between two families is thrown down, a feeling of kinship arises between them and they no longer trouble themselves over the circumstance that the one belongs to the Imeum Peuët, and the other to one of the three allied tribes. Now all goes well as long as nothing occurs to disturb the peace between the kawōms. Suppose however that a blood-feud springs up between the two and is not at once amicably settled; suppose, as often happens, that such a bila-dispute gradually assumes greater proportions and that the two parties constantly widen the breach between them by robbery and murder? Then we shall find the son fighting against the kawōm of his mother, against his own uncles and cousins, where he belongs say to the Tōʾ Batèë and they to the Imeum Peuët. Or let us take the case of two sisters whose family belongs to the Tōʾ Batèë, and suppose that one marries a member of the Imeum Peuët (thus transgressing the theoretical rule), and the other a member of the Lhèë Reutoïh. The usual place of residence of the two husbands, if they do not neglect their wives, will, in accordance with the Achehnese adat, be in the same house or at least in the same courtyard. Should a conflict such as we have just supposed arise, the brothers