Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese Vol II. - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/84

 Nor indeed can it be said that an Achehnese work is better protected against change by the written than by the oral form of transmission. Every copyist claims an author's privilege to modify the original, just as the reciter does in transmission by word of mouth. Should he fail to embellish the original according to his own taste and ideas, he would be looked on by the Achehnese as lacking both intelligence and literary talent.

In any case there can be no objection to our devoting a portion of this chapter to those products of the Achehnese intellect which lie on or just outside the borders of literature.

The Achehnese is very rich in proverbs and other sententious sayings (miseuë, from the Arab. mithāl). Many of these are also to be found in a more or less modified form in Malay, while others display purely Achehnese characteristics. Descriptions of important events or conditions which constantly recur in Achehnese life, are generally contained in metre, and in this form are known to everybody. For instance, one need only repeat the prelude "I go on foot", to at once remind an Achehnese of the verses placed in the mouth of heroes departing for the fight, and he will repeat the stanza: "On my back (= borne by others) shall I return; none shall dare to fetch me (= my corpse) from the enemy's land. At my departure I have spat upon the steps of the house (symbolic leave-taking of the Penates); no man can see the world twice".

The situation which we should describe by the comparison "two cocks in one fowl-yard", at once suggests to the Achehnese a number of verses descriptive of untenable situations such as "a country with two kings", "a mosque with two lights" (i.e. two doctors of the law, each of whom wishes to be the ruling authority) "a gampōng with two teachers". Such examples might easily be multiplied ten-fold.

The riddles (hiëm) of the Achehnese are some of them identical in all respects, all of them in character, with those of the Malays, Javanese and Sundanese.

The works employed by the Achehnese for the pursuit of their various branches of learning, are, as we saw in the last chapter, written in Malay or Arabic; some of these are however, as we shall presently see, popularized by being transposed into Achehnese rhyming verse.