Bila (from Arabic diya, blood money) was the Acehnese customary payment exacted for killing or wounding — a central institution of Acehnese customary law. The concept of blood money was not foreign to native customary law in other parts of the Eastern Archipelago; in Acheh it appears to have been introduced through the medium of Islam, though not without modifications.
Amount
The ordinary bila for causing death in Acheh was 500 Spanish (Mexican) dollars. For wounding the amount was proportionally less.
Islamic Law vs. Acehnese Practice
The Mohammedan law gives the right of retributive vengeance for wilful murder only to the heir of the victim, or in cases of wounding to the wounded man himself. The execution of vengeance was made subject to the supervision of the public authorities. Yet in Acheh it remained an established rule that blood feuds were decided without any interference by the territorial authorities, simply under the direction of the panglima kawom (tribal chief). Exceptions occurred only through the authority of an unusually energetic uleebalang or unusually influential ulama.
Collection of Blood Money
The highland blood-debtor, to whom a period of one or two years was granted for paying off the diët, would go on a journey “to collect subscriptions” (chö’ ripë) from all his well-to-do fellow tribesmen, sometimes coming down into the lowlands to apply for contributions from those of whose tribal connection the recollection was merely dim.
Account from Atjèh by J. Kreemer (Deel II)
Kreemer provides the following account of bila (blood revenge) in Atjèh.
Bila (Gayo: bèla, Alas: bilo) was the Atjèhnese practice of blood revenge — the right to demand the “blood-debt sacrifice” (bila göb). Toentöt bila meant the right to demand the blood-debt sacrifice. Originally exercised by all members of the wronged person’s kawöm (clan), bila was the violent form of revenge, distinguished from diët (blood money), which was the non-bloody composition.
Three cases for blood revenge: in Atjèh, bila was especially applicable in three cases: (1) manslaughter (pöh) or wounding (ta’); (2) adultery (dina / moemoekah / meureusam) — for which the bila required killing BOTH guilty parties (pöh doea kadoeo); and (3) theft — catching a thief in flagrante delicto (pöh pantjoeri).
The beungköng ordeal: a traditional ordeal for a death-guilty offender who escaped blood revenge involved the beungköng (a particular draped garment), an iron cuirass, and a reuntjöng sigeupöh. The offender was placed in the middle of a square with his blood relatives on one side and those of the killed woman and her husband on the other three; he had to hack at a boundary post, after which the offended party could fell him — unless he escaped to his relatives’ side. This was known only by tradition in Kreemer’s time.
Sië keubeuë and si geupöh: a thief caught in flagrante (pöh pantjoeri) could be killed, but the killer had to prove the deceased was really a thief through the peusah pantjoeri procedure (verification by the Oelèëbalang). Once confirmed, the Oelèëbalang declared the thief sië keubeuë (“buffalo meat,” i.e. vogelfrei / outlawed). The equivalent term si geupöh was applied to one who had incurred blood-debt and fled (murderer, adulterer, or thief).
Account from De onderwerping van Atjeh (Van Heutsz, 1893) — the bangoen episode at Gighen and Samalanga
Van Heutsz’s 1893 tract records the bangoen — in Van Heutsz’s spelling, glossed by him as “bloedprijs” (blood-price) — as the adat institution central to the disputes at Gighen and Samalanga in 1880, in which the Dutch emissaries Said Abdellah and Soetan Maharadja were murdered and the bangoen owed for the killings was repeatedly delayed. The episode was, in Van Heutsz’s diagnosis, the test-case for Scherer’s kruisboot-bangoen method — the operational prototype of the scheepvaartregeling by which a Dutch cruiser was anchored before the harbour of a recalcitrant landschap to enforce, by the levy of import and export duties, the payment of the bangoen owed for the murder of a Dutch emissary.
Van Heutsz records the episode:
“door het gebeurde te Gighen en te Samalanga, waar onze zendelingen Said Abdellah en Soetan Maharadja vermoord waren, en waar men telkens uitvluchten zocht in het betalen van den opgelegden bangoen (bloedprijs)”.
— “by what happened at Gighen and at Samalanga, where our emissaries Said Abdellah and Soetan Maharadja were murdered, and where one repeatedly sought excuses in the paying of the imposed bangoen (blood-price).” Said Abdellah — the Dutch emissary murdered at Gighen on the north coast — and Soetan Maharadja — the Dutch emissary murdered at Samalanga on the north coast — were the “zendelingen” (literally “emissaries”; here: civil emissaries, not Christian missionaries) whose killings triggered the test-case for Scherer’s kruisboot-bangoen method. The bangoen owed for these killings was, in Scherer’s diagnosis, the operational instrument by which the Dutch could enforce the beëedigde 18 artikelen — the political pact by which the coastal hoeloebalang of the Onderhoorigheden had acknowledged Dutch sovereignty in the early 1870s.
Scherer’s kruisboot deployment
Scherer’s solution was the kruisboot — the cruiser — anchored before the harbour of the recalcitrant negeri to enforce the bangoen payment by the levy of import and export duties. Van Heutsz records the operational mechanism:
“Hij verzocht en verkreeg toen van den Generaal van der Heijden vergunning om vóór die havens een kruisboot te leggen en den bangoen te innen door rechten te heffen op de in- en uit te voeren goederen. Dit hielp; te Gighen betaalde men nog vóór dat de kruisboot er lag en te Samalanga, nadat de kruisboot er slechts drie dagen gelegen had.”
— “He requested and obtained from Generaal van der Heijden permission to lay a cruiser before those harbours and to collect the bangoen by levying duties on the imported and exported goods. This helped; at Gighen one paid even before the cruiser lay there, and at Samalanga, after the cruiser had lain there only three days.” The kruisboot-bangoen method thus operated by economic coercion: the cruiser’s blockade of the harbour cut the negeri off from its seaborne trade, and the bangoen was paid — at Gighen before the cruiser even arrived (the threat sufficing), at Samalanga within three days of the cruiser’s arrival — to lift the blockade and restore the negeri’s access to the sea.
The bangoen as prototype of the scheepvaartregeling
The episode was, in Van Heutsz’s diagnosis, the operational prototype of the scheepvaartregeling — the systematic contrôle of in- and out-flow of goods through Dutch-occupied harbours that would be formalised by Laging Tobias in May 1883 and that became the operational architecture of Dutch indirect rule in the Onderhoorigheden after the 1884 Concentratie. Van Heutsz records Scherer’s diagnostic move:
“Dat was voor Scherer eene vingerwijzing en bracht hem op het denkbeeld, dat als slechts alle in- en uitvoer langs onze vestigingen plaats had onder onze contröle, wij ook het middel in de hand hadden om de hoofden van de verschillende staatjes in het rechte spoor te houden.”
— “That was for Scherer a finger-showing and brought him to the idea, that if only all in- and out-flow took place through our establishments under our control, we also had the means in hand to keep the chiefs of the various statelets on the right track.” The bangoen was, in this sense, the adat institution whose exploitation by Scherer produced the operational template of the entire post-1884 contrôle architecture: the kruisboot enforcing the bangoen payment was the prototype of the scheepvaartregeling enforcing the broader fiscal-and-political subordination of the Onderhoorigheden.
Significance of the bangoen episode
The bangoen’s significance in the Aceh Wiki History record rests, in Van Heutsz’s diagnosis, on four things: it was the adat institution central to the disputes at Gighen (Said Abdellah) and Samalanga (Soetan Maharadja) in 1880 — the test-case for Scherer’s kruisboot-bangoen method; it was the institution whose exploitation by Scherer produced the operational prototype of the scheepvaartregeling; and it was the institution whose exploitation produced, in Van Heutsz’s diagnosis, the operational architecture of Dutch indirect rule in the Onderhoorigheden after the 1884 Concentratie. The bangoen is, in this sense, the adat institution on which the operational architecture of Dutch indirect rule in Atjeh turned — the customary blood-price whose exploitation by Scherer produced the kruisboot, the scheepvaartregeling, and the contrôle of the entire Onderhoorigheden.
See Also
- Kawom
- Adat
- Hikum
- Uleebalang
- Great Acheh
- Kawöm
- Diët
- Scherer
- Said Abdellah
- Soetan Maharadja
- Gighen
- Samalanga
- Scheepvaartregeling
- Kruisboot
- The 18 artikelen
- Van der Heijden
- Laging Tobias
- Concentratiestelsel
- J. B. van Heutsz
- Atjeh
- Onderhoorigheden
- 1880
- 1883
- 1884
- 1893
Sources
The Achehnese, Vol. I, by Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje, translated by A.W.S. O’Sullivan, indexed by R.J. Wilkinson. Leyden: E.J. Brill, 1906. Chapter I, § 4, pp. 44–58.
Atjèh. Algemeen samenvattend overzicht van land en volk van Atjèh en onderhoorigheden, door J. Kreemer, Archivaris van het Atjèh Instituut. Tweede Deel. Leiden: N.V. Boekhandel en Drukkerij voorheen E.J. Brill, 1923. Identifier: Delpher MMKB02B:000001798.
De onderwerping van Atjeh, door J. B. van Heutsz, Majoor der Infanterie, gewezen Chef van den Staf in Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden. ‘s-Gravenhage: De Gebroeders van Cleef; Batavia: G. Kolff en Co., 1893, esp. pp. 22, 25–27 (the bangoen episode at Gighen and Samalanga). OCR-filename: 20260718_105749_DLP-107-De_onderwerping_van_Atjeh_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt.