Atjeh calendar constellations — the use of specific star-constellations (notably Scorpio and the Pleiades) to regulate the agricultural year in Atjeh — is the indigenous Atjehnese counterpart to the Islamic lunar calendar, recorded in Prof. Dr. Kernkamp’s chapter De invloed van den Islam in Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk (1946). The constellations are named in Kernkamp’s discussion of the coexistence of the Islamic lunar calendar with the indigenous solar-agricultural year.
Kernkamp’s account
Kernkamp introduces the Atjeh constellations in the course of his discussion of the Islamic calendar’s inadequacy for agricultural purposes. His wording: “It appeared already from the foregoing that one in the Indies, as in most Muslim lands, besides a ‘church’ year has also retained a ‘civil’ year. This must almost be so in a land of farmers, for the Muslim lunar year is unsuited to determining the time in which all sorts of work on the land must be begun. For this purpose one must go up and down with the solar year, and one bases oneself on the stands of various stars (whereby on Java Orion is important, and in Atjeh, for example, Scorpio and the Pleiades).”
The two-calendar system
The two-calendar system that Kernkamp describes is characteristic of the Muslim agricultural peoples of the Indies: the Islamic lunar calendar governs the religious cycle (Ramadan, the two Eids, the pilgrimage month, the Muharram taboo-days), while the indigenous solar-agricultural calendar governs the cycle of planting, harvest and other agricultural work. The solar-agricultural calendar is, in Atjeh, calibrated by the heliacal risings and settings of specific star-constellations — most notably Scorpio (the constellation whose heliacal rising in the eastern pre-dawn sky marks, in many Indonesian traditions, the onset of the agricultural year) and the Pleiades (the cluster whose heliacal setting marks, in many Indonesian traditions, the onset of the dry season). The Gajos, Kernkamp notes elsewhere in the chapter, are an exception: “the Gajos have exclusively a Muslim calendar and know by experience how much time must elapse each time before the fields can be worked again”. Atjeh, by contrast, retains the dual calendar.
Significance
For the Atjeh-focused reader, the Atjeh calendar constellations are significant as one of the clearest examples in Kernkamp’s chapter of the survival of pre-Islamic Atjehnese conceptions within the formally Islamic religious life of Atjeh. The same constellations are documented in the Soerat te’h (Atjeh divination book) alongside other calendrical and horoscopic calculations; their use, together with the *pen* concept in ear-piercing and gravestone-placing, places Atjeh within the wider Indonesian complex of magico-astronomical time-reckoning.
Dutch terms used in this article
- Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk — What the Indies Received and Gave
- Wereldbibliotheek N.V. — World Library Ltd.
- invloed van den Islam — influence of Islam
- pen — open/wide (Atjeh concept)
- Atjeh — Aceh
- Acheh — Aceh
- Java — Java
- Gajoland — Gayo country
- Gajo — Gayo
- Gajos — Gayo people
- mica — pepper (Balinese)
- Pleiaden — Pleiades (constellation)
- Orion — Orion (constellation)
- Prof. Dr. — Professor Doctor
- Dr. — Doctor
See Also
- Soerat te’h
- Pen (Atjeh)
- Boeròng
- Idja pinggang
- Friday prohibitions
- Kadar night
- Gajoland
- Acheh
- C. Snouck Hurgronje
- J. Kreemer
- Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk
- W. J. A. Kernkamp
Source
Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk, onder leiding van Dr. C. W. Wormser (Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek N.V., 1946), p. 88 (chapter De invloed van den Islam door Prof. Dr. W. J. A. Kernkamp).