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The number of the members of this body is uncertain; they are neither appointed nor regularly chosen but so to speak silently acknowledged by common assent. When the teungku and keuchiʾ meet to discuss important gampōng affairs (including most family matters), the elders are also to be found whether summoned or not. No unauthorized person ventures to take part in these debates, as by doing so he would expose himself to ridicule; but when calls have once or twice been made on the tact, experience and knowledge of adat of any individual, he becomes known as an ureuëng tuha and his voice has its weight in all future deliberations.
Mupakat.The Achehnese are great lovers of mupakat[1], in form at least if not in actuality. The most insignificant subjects give rise to diffuse exchange of opinions. The more important chiefs are loth to deal with questions affecting their districts and their dependants except in the presence of some persons who as it were represent the latter; did they neglect to "deliberate" with these delegates they would quickly lose their influence. Habib Abdurrahman once told me that the mupakat forms the strongest factor in the statescraft of an administrator[2] among the Achehnese; such deliberative gatherings are the instrument by which he ensures the carrying out of many a scheme. By this device his weaker opponents are terrorized, while the stronger are flattered, and finally many are won over and even persuaded that they themselves were the originators of the proposed plan.
It thus follows as a matter of course that in the gampōng, that great household of father keuchiʾ and mother teungku, the eldest sons at
- ↑ From the Arab. muwāfaḳat, which word the Achehnese have naturally mistaken for a verbal form derived from a root pakat to which they give the meaning of "plan, deliberation". Meu (or mu before labials) is almost the equivalent of the Malay běr. Thus from pat = "place" we have sapat = "in one and the same place" and meusapat = "to come to or be in the same place, to assemble together." In the abortive ordinance of Mr. Der Kinderen (p. 2 par. 2 etc.) he has made this latter word a substantive and has at the same time changed the first vowel into "u". "These (the native tribunals of whose existence in Acheh Mr. Der Kinderen assures us) bear the name of Musapat". These "musapats" however belong to the realm of fancy. [Since the Dutch government has become established in Acheh, justice has been in fact administered by native tribunals under the guidance of European officials, and these courts have been called by the name manufactured by Mr. Der Kinderen. But these "musapats" differ greatly both in the manner of their constitution and their functions from the creations of Mr. Der Kinderen].
- ↑ He meant of course an Achehnese raja or an Arab of distinction such as Sayyid Abdurrahman himself, not an infidel overlord who is simply obeyed on account of his temporal power.
