Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese Vol II. - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/105

 saws and various implements of torture, but even fire proved powerless to harm him.

Nor could he be slain until he had himself resolved no longer to resist his fate. When this time came, he informed his enemies that the only way to kill him was to pour molten lead into his nose and mouth.

This was done and so ended the life of the villain who still remains for the Achehnese of to day the type of the wickedness of "kafirs", and especially the kaphé Ulanda or "Dutch infidel".

The Hikayat Pòchut Muhamat (VII).

This epic of Prince Muhamat differs in many respects from that we have just described, and a comparison between them is favourable to the later work.

We venture to call Pòchut Muhamat the later work, although the author and date of the composition of Malém Dagang are unknown, and the entirely legendary character of the traditions with which it deals, points to its having been composed a considerable time after the great naval expedition of Meukuta Alam. At the same time it is unlikely that the celebration in verse of the heroic deeds of Meukuta Alam's general should not have taken place for more than a century after the death of that prince, when his dynasty had already given way to other rulers; and Pòchut Muhamat's warlike ventures are dated just a century after the death of Meukuta Alam.

The poet of the "Pòchut Muhamat” reveals himself at the end of his epic as Teungku Lam Rukam. This title shows him to have been a man distinguished from the general mass of the people by a certain amount of religious knowledge and devotion, and to have resided in the gampōng of Lam Rukam in the XXV Mukims. Though not himself present at the achievements he celebrates, he has, he tells us, derived all his information from actual eyewitnesses. Thus we cannot be far wrong in assuming that the Teungku composed his poem about the middle of the 18$th$ century.

With him we are thus on historic ground, though the facts are of course reflected through an imaginative medium wholly in keeping