186
regards its division into chapters. It has 95 chapters, thus one more than the edition noticed by Loth.
A few years ago this work was printed at the lithographing establishment of Haji Tirmīdi in Singapore, but in a most slovenly manner. Even the last figure of the date is undecipherable. Probably this is the only Achehnese book that has up to the present appeared in print.
Mènhajōy abidin.Mènhajōy abidin (LXXXVII).
The Minhāj al-ʿAbidin of the celebrated Ghazālī († 1111), belongs to the same class as the worke we have just dealt with. It is a collection of sundry matters bearing on religious law, doctrinal teaching and even mysticism likely to be of use to the devout layman. The author of the much abbreviated Achehnese version is Chèh Marahaban[1].
Hikayat maʾripat (LXXXVIII).
This mystic disquisition introduces itself as a kasidah (qaçīdah), but the word seems to have been selected merely for purposes of rhyme, for there is nothing either in the form or contents of the hikayat that recalls an Arabic ḳasidah. The name given to the work above refers to its contents, for the first and most important part is devoted to the knowledge (Maʾripat) of the nature of mankind.
In this work, as in so many similar mystic writings popular among the Malays, Javanese and Sundanese, man's knowledge of himself is so conceived that every item in the description of his nature, his characteristics etc., corresponds to something in the nature and qualities of God. Man and the whole world are revelations of the Godhead, and reveal its image; this concept prepares the way for the second theme which is developed by our poet under the title of tawḥīd (pronounced tèëhit by the Achehnese), i. e. the unity of God, which embraces all things and in which man and the world are thus included as forms of its manifestation.
Finally the ḍikr (Ach. liké) is described at great length as the best mean for advancing oneself in this knowledge of self which is at the same time knowledge of God, and so to weld together the doctrine of unity with existence proper that the little Ego may be merged in the great. The peculiar method of this recital of the confession of faith which is recommended to his readers by the poet, is, as he himself expressly
- ↑ See Vol. I. pp. 101, 187 and Vol. II, p. 28.
