Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese Vol II. - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/75



Herewith we can take our leave of the èleumèës of the Achehnese.

We often read of the heroes of hikayats or stories and sometimes hear it asserted in praise of ordinary mortals in Acheh that they have successfully practised "the fourteen sciences" (eleumèë peuët blaïh). That this number has not been fixed by the Achehnese themselves may easily be surmised from the variety to be found in the recapitulations of these branches of knowledge. Every author has his own system of enumeration. One regards the 14 sciences as made up of different branches of the one science par excellence, that of religion; and these branches can equally well be divided into a greater or smaller number of heads than the supposed fourteen. Another includes in the fourteen various èleumèës such as those we have just described. There is no hard and fast rule or traditional division.

In Arabic works on the Mohammedan law, the scientific attainments required of a candidate for the post of qādhī or judge are often described as the mastery of 15 sciences. It is not improbable that in some work of this kind the number cited may have been 14 instead of 15, for in this case too the actual number depends very much on individual taste. This may have given rise to the adoption of 14 as the traditional number in Acheh, first in the learned circles and later on among the general public. Now however, each individual takes the liberty of deciding for himself what èleumèës are included in the peuët blaïh (fourteen).

The term teuseuréh peuët blaïh, which really means the fourteen forms which in a tense of an Arabic verb serve to mark all distinctions of number, gender and person has gained a certain popularity outside the circle of literate men. It may well be that these teuseuréhs (the true meaning of which is only known to those initiated in Arabic grammar) were conceived of as separate branches of learning.