Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese Vol II. - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/48

 feet, the money being paid into the common chest. Ill-kept though these rules often are, they still render the pondoks and their occupants a little less unclean than the rangkangs and their muribs in Acheh, where the universal dislike of water and habit of dirt have reached an unusually high degree.

In Java gudig or budug (mangy or leprous) is a very common epithet of the students, and the "santri gudig" is even to some extent a popular type. Thus it is not surprising that in Acheh also kudé and suchlike skin-diseases, though they are not confined to the students huts, are yet regarded as a sort of hall-mark of the murib.

The general development of the muribs in Acheh derives less benefit from their sojourn in the rangkangs than that of the santris in Java from their wanderings from one pěsantrèn to another. The latter become familiar with their fellow-countrymen of other tribes, as Javanese with Sundanese and Madurese, and their studies draw them from the country into the large towns such as Madiun and Surabaya. They also improve their knowledge of agriculture through planting padi and coffee to help in their maintenance. In Acheh geographical knowledge is confined to narrow limits; as the student only moves about within his own country, intercourse with kindred tribes is not promoted by the meudagang nor does he act as a pioneer of development in any way. He returns home with very little more knowledge of the world than he possessed when he went on his travels; all he learns is an ever-increasing contempt for the adat of his country (which conflicts with Islam in many respects) so that later on, as a dweller in the gampōng, he looks down on his fellow-countrymen with a somewhat Pharasaical arrogance.

It is needless to observe that the morals of the inhabitants of the rangkangs in Acheh are still less above suspicion than those of the pěsantrèn-students in Java.

Those who have devoted themselves to study and all who have for some reason or other a claim to the title of teungku, are regarded by the mass of the people not only as having a wider knowledge of religion than themselves, but also as having to some extent, control