Achates

“ Trojan and Tyrian shall be held by me in even balance. And would that he your king, that Aeneas were here, storm-driven to this same haven! But I will send messengers along the coast, and bid them trace Libya to its limits, if haply he strays shipwrecked in forest or town.'
Stirred by these words brave Achates and lord Aeneas both ere now burned to break through the cloud. Achates first accosts Aeneas: 'Goddess-born, what purpose now rises in thy spirit? Thou seest all is safe, our fleet and comrades are restored. One only is wanting, whom our eyes saw whelmed amid the waves ”

“ O prince, be to her a son. To know that thou wilt be here to solace and comfort her will give me fresh confidence." The prince swore to love and cherish her no less than his own lost mother, Creusa, and wishing him Godspeed he girt on his shoulder the sword of that famous Cretan swordsman, Lycaon, with hilt of wrought gold and scabbard of ivory. To Nisus, Achates gave his own helmet, that had borne the brunt of many a shrewd blow.
Thus armed and charged with many messages from Iulus to his father they left the camp, and the captains sent after them a parting cheer. ”

“ Achates, see King Priam wags his hand, He is alive, Troy is not overcome. Ach. Thy mind Æneas that would have it so Deludes thy eyesight; Priamus is dead. Æn. Ah Troy is sack'd, and Priamus is dead, And why should poor Æneas be alive? Asca. Sweet father, leave to weep, this is not he: For were it Priam he would smile on me. Acha. Æneas see here come the Citizens; Leave to lament, lest they laugh at our fears. ”

“ He found the hero attended by his faithful Achates, and, Pallas soon joining them, the old king spoke thus:
"Illustrious Trojan, it is but little we can do in so great a cause. Our state is feeble, hemmed in on one side by the river, on the other by the Rutulians. But I propose to ally you with a people numerous and rich, to whom fate has brought you at the propitious moment. The Etruscans hold the country beyond the river. Mezentius was their king, a monster of cruelty, who invented unheard-of torments to gratify his vengeance. ”

“ Nay, their eyes would scan all the story in order, were not Achates already returned from his errand, and with him the priestess of Phoebus and Trivia, Deïphobe daughter of Glaucus, who thus accosts the king: 'Other than this are the sights the time demands: now were it well to sacrifice seven unbroken bullocks of the herd, as many fitly chosen sheep of two years old.' Thus speaks she to Aeneas; nor do they delay to do her sacred bidding; and the priestess calls the Teucrians into the lofty shrine. ”

“ This bough is sacred to Proserpine, Queen of the Lower World, and to her must you bear it as a gift. Without it no living being may enter the Lower World. Pluck it, and if the Fates have willed it so, it will yield at a touch, else no mortal force can wrest it from its parent stem."
So Æneas and Achates plunged into the primeval forest near which the Sibyl dwelt. They had not gone far when two doves alighted on the sward hard by. Then Æneas was glad, for he knew them to be the birds of his mother Venus, and he besought his mother that her messengers might guide him on his way. ”

“ Thence they draw a considerable portion of their knowledge of the world and of life, and almost all that they know of what has happened in the past, or what goes on outside their own country. Whoever wishes to understand the spirit of the Achehnese must not fail to bear in mind the nature of this, their mental pabulum; and should anyone desire to try to lead the civilization of Acheh along a new channel, it would be undoubtedly worth his while to make his innovations palatable to them by presenting them in 'hikayat' form. ”

“ Jeumalōy, whose tomb is still to be seen not far from the principal mosque of Acheh, is universally revered as a saint by the Achehnese. Pòteu Uëʾ, for whose sake his younger brother drove out the sayyid, and that too with the help of subjects turned from their allegiance, is the founder of the present Achehnese dynasty. No wonder then that the scions of the royal house of Acheh will brook no mention of the Hikayat Pòchut Muhamat and regard it as a forbidden thing for anyone of their family to order or listen to its recitation. ”

“ Imagination runs riot throughout the whole, but the method of expression is thoroughly Achehnese; the thoughts which the poet puts in the mouths of his characters and the scenes which he has lavishly embroidered on the framework of his story, are all derived from the everyday life of the Achehnese people.
Contents of the epic.The poem begins with the first tokens of enmity on the part of Si Ujut, a son of the raja of Malacca, against his benefactor Éseukanda Muda, the powerful ruler of Acheh. ”

“ Political foresight is, in these days at least, foreign to the nature of all Achehnese. A raja of Acheh in particular, who plunged into the fray with persevering self-sacrifice in the interests of the people or their religion would be a phenomenon that the Achehnese themselves would be unable to explain except as a revelation of the boundless miraculous power of God.
To this we may add that nowhere could worse material be found for organizing a stout resistance to foreign invasion than in the lowland districts of Acheh in the immediate neighbourhood of the Dalam. ”

“ The Achehnese are, comparatively speaking, among the least well-mannered of the inhabitants of the Archipelago, yet in their behaviour towards their chiefs they pay regard to sundry formalities. If a man be sitting on the roadside as the ulèëbalang and his retinue pass by and omits to ask meuʾah or forgiveness for his presence, he may feel sure at the least of a beating from the rakans by way of correction. Both the chiefs and all the members of their retinue are as a rule very free with such sharp admonitions towards persons of low degree. ”

“ Many chiefs of Achehnese coast-dependencies formally gave in their submission in order to protect their commerce from injury, but the number who withheld their allegiance was greater; and many chiefs in the interior did not consider themselves bound by the promises of the raja of the coast. Furthermore the state of war—as may be learnt from our first chapter—added to the many chiefs who already disputed authority in Acheh a countless number of others: adventurers, religious leaders, military chiefs of every type. ”

“ About 1891 there descended again upon the East Indian Archipelago a perfect shower of copies of a new edition. It was printed and reprinted in Malay at Singapore, Palembang etc., and led orthodox pandits both in Hindustan and at Batavia to publish polemical treatises in which the wasiat was branded as a lying vision.
As may well be supposed, all these publications find their way in some form or other to Acheh; but I know of only two Achehnese versions in hikayat form. One is old ”

“ Two heroic poems (Malém Dagang and Pòchut Muhamat) dealing with historical facts and legends of the past of Acheh, have been known in written form as far back as the memory of the people extends. Another, which in form and character quite corresponds with the two mentioned above, and which celebrates the heroic deeds of the Achehnese in their war with the Dutch, was composed gradually by a man who could neither read nor write, and was first reduced to writing in its entirety at my own instance. ”

“ It is no empty saying which the Achehnese quote to one another in their councils—keuchiʾ eumbah, teungku ma="the keuchiʾ is (our) father and the teungku (our) mother".
All peace-loving inhabitants of a gampōng are convinced of the necessity for having one person to speak or negotiate in the name of all; the more so because as we shall presently see, sundry family matters such as marriage, divorce, the bringing up of orphans or changes of residence are treated in Acheh as matters affecting the whole gampōng. ”

“ In the beginning the trust of the Achehnese in God's help seemed now and then to be justified. Where they met with reverses the representatives of religion were ever ready with their explanation. "He that will carry on a holy war with assurance of victory must begin," said they, "by turning from all his iniquities.' Small wonder that Allah did not always cause the arms of Acheh to be victorious since he had so much maʿsiët (trangression) to visit on the people. ”

“ 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" [1] , 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 hikayat of Malém Diwa for instance, is composed of the same materials as a well-known Malay tale which is also current among the Bataks. This does not prevent the Achehnese from representing their hero as being born, growing up and performing most of his exploits in Acheh, or from imagining that he still exists, wandering about in the highlands of the North and East Coasts. They are convinced that anyone who has practised the science of invulnerability with success may enjoy the privilege of a meeting with this invincible immortal [79] . ”

“ In the capital and the coast towns of tributary states, they form an item of greater importance, for it is precisely the most influential families that are of foreign origin. All the holy men and most of the noted scholars of the law in Acheh were foreigners. So too with many great traders, shahbandars, writers and the trusted agents of princes and chiefs; nay, the very line of kings which has ruled with some interruptions since 1723 is according to tradition of Bugis origin.
Nias slaves.Slaves are a factor of importance in the development of the Achehnese race. ”

“ In the Achehnese hikayat the princess's country is called Tanjōng Puri and she is not borne away to the forest by supernatural force as in the Malay tale, but carried off by Radén Meuntròë's own father who makes war on her sire for refusing to pay him tribute.
The Achehnese composer has also given to the whole a slightly Mohammadan tinge. The diwas, it is true, play a weighty part and work all manner of marvels, but not till Allah has expressly charged them so to do; and people in distress invoke the aid, not of the all-administering diwas, but of the almighty Creator. ”

“ He firmly believes that all that he reveres as the sacred institutions of his country (albeit not mentioned in a single one of the edicts) is adat [11] Meukuta Alam or at any rate adat pòten meureuhōm, "adat of defunct royalties", and he is convinced that information respecting them is of a certainty contained in some one or other of the sarakatas.
The Achehnese chiefs have a secondary aim when they refer with a certain emphasis to these edicts as the laws of Acheh. All that is contained therein respecting court ceremonial, festivals, religion etc., they regard with complete indifference ”

“ The Sultans of Acheh were in part Malayan, in part Arab, and in part—as with the line of princes who have now occupied the throne for more than a century and a half—of Bugis origin. The great literati or holy men were almost without exception foreigners, and the same is true of many of the rich traders and high officials. The Klings and Arabs settled in Acheh, nay even some of the slaves have after several generations become an integral part of the Achehnese people. ”

“ When finally the agony of her father, the empty clamour of Achilles, her mother’s undignified tremors, nerve her to trample her own dread under foot, we rejoice precisely because what we witness is the triumph of common human nature. Even Achilles, son of a goddess as story reported him, is a common-place person too. This is not the hero who flames through the Iliad, but a young noble led into the extreme of folly by this very legend that his origin is divine. ”

“ Even at the present day there are to be found in Acheh persons whose good taste is sufficient to make them prefer a recitation of Pòchut Muhamat to one of any of the numerous Malay stories that have been translated into Achehnese verse, tales of fabulous princes who performed all kinds of impossibilities to gain possession of the chosen one of their soul. ”

“ Distribution of the people; clans and tribes.
The family and the tribes (kawōm sukèë) . The family, whose dwelling-place is the Achehnese house just described, its origin and the customs and laws that control its daily life are all dealt with in a later chapter. There we shall see how among many genuine patriarchal institutions, survivals are not wanting of the former prevalence of what the Germans call "Mutterrecht", or to which they apply the curious hybrid name "Matriarchat." ”

“ The better educated of the Achehnese, who are not scholars in the strict sense, read Malay hikayats which are either entirely new or not formerly known in Acheh. Such as suit their taste are disseminated as haba [78] until some poet or rhymster thinks it worth while to make of them an Achehnese hikayat. And so lacking in refinement of taste have the modern Achehnese become, as for the most part to find more pleasure in these flavourless impossibilities than in their own historical epics. ”

“ Not by any means all of the sayyids of Acheh are theologians or pandits. Most of them devote themselves to trade or in later generations to agriculture, but they enjoy none the less the customary reverence based on religious feeling, even where their life is far from testifying to a devotional spirit on their part. Such is often the case not only with sayyids who have found their way over from Arabia in the guise of random adventurers, but also with those born in Acheh, who quickly make their own of Achehnese manners and vices. ”