Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese Vol II. - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/115

 whereupon the besiegers would be admitted. This was done, and then began the plundering of the Dalam, which Jeumalōy's followers had thought impregnable, and in which they had accordingly brought all their valuables. The chief part of the loot was gold and opium. The poet declares that during the sack some looked on inactive, and when asked why they stood aloof, replied that it was forbidden to plunder the goods of fellow-believers as though they were infidels.

Jeumalōy fled successively to Lam Baruëh, Gampōng Meulayu, Kruëng Raba and Kruëng Kala, and after that was pursued no further; but some Achehnese chiefs who connived at his escape had to pay dearly for their adhesion to his cause. The Mukims Buëng, for instance, were ravaged with fire to the very last house.

Thus Pòteu Uëʾ, thanks to the energy and courage of his youngest brother, became almost in his own despite master of all Acheh. When order had been fully restored and trade revived, Pòchut Muhamat received as his reward half the port dues, and a year later married a lady of royal lineage at Gampōng Lham Bhuʾ.

Our short resumé of this heroic poem is entirely inadequate to enable the reader to appreciate its beauties. Even a complete translation would fall short in this respect, for the Achehnese rhyme and metre are difficult to reproduce, and many a proverb and saying would lose its force in the rendering. The merits of the author would, however, be brought out better in a complete translation, since they consist to a great extent in the graphic pictures which he draws of the details of life, thought and speech in Acheh.

This much will however, I hope, be apparent from my short analysis, that the author, by his grasp of his subject, his arrangement of his materials, his unostentatious and objective treatment of the matter in hand and his skill in word-painting, shows himself to be a man of literary gifts of an unusually high order.

We may add that he is a greater master of form than any other Achehnese poet we know of. The facility with which an Achehnese sentence lends itself to the "sanjaʾ" form is apt to lead to slovenly versification, and in most Achehnese hikayats we find side by side with pieces of fine composition passages which give evidence of the sloth-