Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese Vol II. - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/43

 be in the pondok or pěsantrèn" always carries with it in Java the notion of being a stranger . In Acheh the word meudagang, which originally signifies "to be a stranger, to travel from place to place", has passed directly from this meaning to that of "to be engaged in study."

Thus it happens that most of the learned in Great Acheh have spent the greater part of their student life in Pidië, while vice versâ the studiously inclined in Pidië and on the East Coast amass their capital of knowledge in Great Acheh.

In the territory of Pidië in the wider sense of the word, there were, before the coming of the Dutch to Acheh, certain places which were in some measure centres of learned life, where many muribs (the Achehnese name for "student", from the Arab. murīd) both from the country itself and from Acheh used to prosecute their studies. Such were Langga, Langgò, Sriweuë, Simpang, Ië Leubeuë (= Ayer Labu). Tirò, which has in these latter days acquired a widespread celebrity from the two teungkus of that place who took a prominent part in the war against the Dutch, was from ancient times less famed for the teaching given there than for the great number of learned men whom it produced and who lived there. Tirò was as it were sanctified by the presence of so many living ulamas and the holy tombs of their predecessors. None dared to carry arms in this gampōng even in time of war; and the hukōm or religious law was stronger here than elsewhere, while its enemy the adat was weaker. Growing up amid such surroundings, many young men feel themselves led as it were by destiny to the study of the sacred law.