The Atjehse Id al-Adha cow-not-buffalo choice is the documented Atjehnese preference for sacrificing a cow (rather than a buffalo) at the Id al-Adha (the “great feast” that concludes the pilgrimage to Mecca), in spite of the general Atjehnese preference for buffalo-meat over beef. The choice is explained, in the Atjehnese account recorded by Snouck Hurgronje in Snouck Hurgronje’s De Atjehers ([[1893-94)|De Atjehers]] (vol. I, p. 262) and re-cited in Kreemer’s *De Karbouw* ([[1956)]] (pp. 104-105), by the belief that a buffalo — “always accustomed to wallow in low water or mud” — would embarrass its rider on the plain of resurrection by stepping into a river or ditch with him; the same consideration is what underlies the *hakikah* rule that the newborn-sacrifice is also never a buffalo. Kreemer suggests that the real underlying reason is that the buffalo was unknown in water-poor Arabia (the ritual’s homeland), so that the canonical Islamic sacrificial animals remained sheep and cow.
The choice and its explanation
The passage in De Karbouw (pp. 104-105) reads:
“In Atjeh kiest men als slachtoffer gewoonlijk een rund en niet een buffel, in weerwil der vrij algemene voorkeur, die men aan buffelvlees schenkt, ‘een buffel, steeds gewoon in laag water of modder zich te vermeien, zou zijnen berijder in ongelegenheid brengen, door met hem in eene rivier of sloot te stappen.’” The Atjehnese explanation, as recorded by Snouck Hurgronje, is eschatological: the sacrificial animal will serve as one’s mount on the plain of resurrection, and a buffalo — accustomed to wallow in low water or mud — would carry its rider into a river or ditch on that day, embarrassing him. The choice of a cow (which does not wallow) thus avoids an eschatological inconvenience. The same consideration underlies the *hakikah* rule that the newborn-sacrifice is also never a buffalo, but is rather a sheep or a cow.
Kreemer’s underlying explanation
Kreemer in De Karbouw (p. 105) adds a historical-anthropological gloss: the real underlying reason for the choice is that the buffalo was unknown in water-poor Arabia (the ritual’s homeland), so that the canonical Islamic sacrificial animals remained sheep and cow. The Atjehnese eschatological explanation is, on this reading, a post hoc folk-rationalisation of a canonical constraint (the buffalo’s absence from the canonical Islamic sacrificial inventory) that itself reflects the animal’s geographical absence from the ritual’s Arabian homeland.
Significance
The Atjehse Id al-Adha cow-not-buffalo choice is significant for the encyclopedia of Acheh history as a documented instance of the tension between the local Atjehnese buffalo-economy (in which the buffalo was the principal working-animal, the principal sacrificial victim in non-canonical rites such as the Rabò sacrifice, and the principal meat-animal of ceremonial slaughter) and the canonical Islamic sacrificial inventory (which admitted only sheep and cow). The Atjehnese resolution of this tension — to choose a cow for Id al-Adha and a sheep or cow for hakikah, never a buffalo — documents the layering of canonical Islamic ritual constraint onto a local buffalo-economy in which the buffalo was, in every other context, the central animal. The eschatological folk-explanation (the buffalo’s wallowing habit would embarrass its rider on the plain of resurrection) is, on Kreemer’s reading, a post hoc rationalisation of the canonical constraint.
Sources
De Karbouw — Zijn betekenis voor de volken van de Indonesische Archipel, by J. Kreemer (‘s-Gravenhage / Bandung: N.V. Uitgeverij W. van Hoeve, 1956), pp. 104-105.
De Atjehers, by C. Snouck Hurgronje, 2 vols. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1893-94), vol. I, p. 262.