Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese Vol II. - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/182

 considerable portion of their knowledge of the world and of life, and almost all that they know of what has happened in the past, or what goes on outside their own country. Whoever wishes to understand the spirit of the Achehnese must not fail to bear in mind the nature of this, their mental pabulum; and should anyone desire to try to lead the civilization of Acheh along a new channel, it would be undoubtedly worth his while to make his innovations palatable to them by presenting them in 'hikayat' form.

The three kinds of Achehnese works which it still remains for us to describe, have in common with one another a religious character. The great majority are composed. in hikayat form; some (only the third variety) are to be found in nalam and in prose.

The channels through which religious stories and legends reached the Achehnese are in the main the same as those by which they received their romantic literature. The fabric of sacred history woven by the popular mind in Mohammadan India, partly with materials derived from the common and unlearned tradition of Persia, partly from pure fiction, reached the far East, including Acheh, before the catholic tradition of which the more or less canonical Arabic works testify. And in spite of the still surviving opposition of the pandits, these quasi-religious romances, largely coloured with the Shiʾite and other heresies, enjoyed and still continue to enjoy a considerable popularity.

The South-Indian Islam, the oldest form in which Mohammedanism came to this Archipelago still survives in these works, not without a large admixture of native superstition. With its semi-pantheistic mysticism, its prayers and mysterious formularies, its popular works on sacred history which we have just alluded to, it will long bid defiance to the orthodoxy of Mecca and Hadramaut, which is seeking to supplant it, and which has in theory driven it entirely from the field.

The materials of these popular works may have been imported into Acheh partly direct from South India and partly by way of the Malayan Countries. They are in either case undoubtedly foreign wares, which