The ateueng (Atjehnese; Malay galangan) was the small dike separating one wet rice field from another in Atjeh. It served at once as a physical boundary, as a path, and — in the Atjehnese law of land — as both a mark of prior cultivation and a metaphor for the limits of a right.
As evidence of cultivation
In Groot-Atjeh a plaintiff who asserted an earlier possessory right over wet rice fields (oemòng) that had been left fallow had in particular to be able to point to traces of ateueng; a former watercourse (loeëng) or the buried oendja could serve as further proof. Witnesses alone did not suffice.
As a limit of the priority right
The Atjehnese expression for the limits of the priority right of a neighbouring sawah-holder over adjoining ground was: “dit recht wordt niet toegekend buiten de ateueng” — this right is not granted beyond the ateueng, the little rice-field dikes. D. W. N. de Boer explained that the expression was sufficiently clear to an Atjehnese because an ateueng is a separation between a rice field and adjoining land of like kind, whereas no ateuengs are used where the sawah passes over into a mountain slope, hilly terrain, ladang ground and the like. The saying therefore meant that the priority right applied only to land not destined for rice cultivation, and not to land suitable for the extension of a sawah complex.
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.