Aboen meu’oeë was the most one-sided of the three Atjehnese forms of mawaih over rice fields, in which the mawaih-giver supplied everything and the cultivator received only one-fifth of the harvest. The term, D. W. N. de Boer explained, meant roughly the putting out to contract of the working — meu’oèé being the working of sawah’s — and expressed the relation between the parties clearly enough.
Terms
Under this figure the giver supplied the ground, the plough cattle and the bibit; bore alone the entire oepah poela (planting wage); and further defrayed the most indispensable belandja of the mawaih-taker — his clothing, food and smoking materials. In such a case the “landheer” received four-fifths and the cultivator of the sawah only one-fifth of the harvest.
Position among the mawaih forms
The three forms formed a descending scale for the cultivator: one-half under mawaih bahagi doea, one-third under mawaih bahagi lhée, and one-fifth under aboen meu’oeë — the share diminishing as the giver’s contribution of capital, cattle, seed, wage and subsistence increased.
See Also
Source
Het recht op den grond in Atjeh, by D. W. N. de Boer, dated Scheveningen, November 1931, pp. 59-80. Offprint DLP-141, Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, ‘s-Gravenhage; Bibliotheek KITLV accession 0060 4460 60 081470 428.