Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/99

 as the meunasah. There are also however certain teachers of note who for their own use and that of their pupils construct a meunasah or déah in their own courtyard. Similar chapels may also be found near sacred graves, but the purpose of such buildings is obviously different from that of the meunasah or déah of the gampōng.

The Friday services are never held in these chapels any more than in the langgar in Java.

In the neighbourhood of the meunasah or déah there often stands a balè i. e. a raised covered platform, which serves as auxiliary to the former.

Let us now consider the administration of the gampōng. This is composed of three elements:

I. The keuchhiʾ with one or more wakis at his disposal.

II. The teungku.

III. The ureuëng tuha.

All three are worthy of closer remark.

I. The keuchiʾ, the headman or father of the gampōng, borrows his authority from the ulèëbalang of the province to which his village belongs. This office, like almost all others in Acheh, has become hereditary, and even an infant son (under the guardianship of a male relation) often succeeds his father therein; but every keuchiʾ is aware that the first of his forefathers who held the post was appointed by the ulèëbalang and that the latter can at any moment deprive him of it.

Where the appointment of keuchiʾs is, as occasionally happens, in the hands of the imeum of their district, this simply testifies to the great personal influence of such imeum, to whom the ulèëbalang has delegated a portion of his own authority.

The fact that the keuchiʾ can as a rule exercise his authority without opposition is however due not so much to the support he enjoys at the hands of his chief, as to his being always the representative of the interests and as far as possible the wishes of the whole gampōng against the ulèëbalang himself as well as against other gampōngs, or against the exaggerated demands of some of his own subjects. It is no empty saying which the Achehnese quote to one another in their councils