Kanduri

Properties3
descriptionThe Acehnese religious feast — a communal meal held on the occasion of religious holidays, life-cycle events, vows, and seasonal transitions, marked by Quran recitation and constituting the most characteristic social institution of Acehnese Islam.
tagsconcept, event, culture, religion, food, ceremony, festival, acehnese, religious, achehnese, islam, aceh, kandoerie, slametan, feast
aliasesKenduri, Kanduri feast, Religious Feast, Kauduris, Achehnese kanduri, Kanoeri, kandoeri, religious meal, Atjèhnese ceremony, Kandoerie, slametan, ceremonial meal, Kandoeri Rajeu, Kandoeri Masoesé, great slametan

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Kanduri (also kenduri, kauduris; from Persian qandūrī, cognate with the Malay kenduri and the Arabic qandūriyya) is the general Acehnese term for a religious feast — the communal meal held on the occasion of religious holidays, life-cycle events (birth, first contact with the earth, circumcision, marriage, death), the completion of a house, the safe return from a journey, seasonal feasts, and in fulfilment of vows (nazar). It was the most characteristic social institution of Acehnese Islam and the form in which the great majority of collective religious observances found their expression. Small kanduris are of very common occurrence in every gampong, and some require the presence of the teungku; the word covers both the periodic feasts of the ecclesiastical year and occasional feasts given at the transitions of life.

Definition and Religious Character

As C. Snouck Hurgronje observes, the kanduri is distinguished from a purely secular meal by a formal religious element: it is marked by the recitation of selections from the Quran or of litanies, followed by a final prayer, after which the assembled company partake of the food. A feast offered to specially honoured guests which lacks this religious consecration is called a peujamè (penjamee), or “guest-meal,” and is “not in any sense of religious character.” The distinction between kanduri and peujamè runs through the whole etiquette of Acehnese hospitality: even where the proximate occasion of a feast is a secular one — a wedding, a safe return, the completion of a house — the presence of the teungku and the recitation of the Quran transform it into a kanduri, while the absence of these would leave it a mere peujamè.

Food at a Kanduri

At kauduris (religious feasts) and suchlike occasions, glutinous rice (bu kunyèt) coloured yellow with turmeric was the favourite dish and the principal offering. To this were always added either tumpoë (a sort of pancakes, six or seven of which were laid on top of the rice) and cheuncuruët (a gelatinous network formed of the same kind of rice), or else grated coconut mixed with red sugar (u mirah), or long strips of stockfish boiled in coconut milk, called keumamaih teunaguën. At smaller feasts the yellow rice forms the pièce de résistance, though a goat is sometimes slaughtered for the guests; otherwise buffaloes, oxen, goats and sheep are seldom killed except at the great annual festivals. Tea and coffee are also served on such occasions, though the use of these beverages is generally restricted to invalids.

At weddings, funeral feasts, receptions of distinguished guests, and other ceremonious occasions, it was customary to serve up the rice and its accessories in a definite traditional manner on dalöngs (trays). This manner of service was called meu’idang: after the rice, fish, and gulè came the tray of sweetmeats, containing a dish of glutinous rice (bu leukat) without turmeric, and a dish of pisang peungat (ripe plantains sliced thin and boiled with cloves, cinnamon, sugar, and pandan-leaves), often with srèykaya (eggs with coconut milk and herbs, well cooked by steaming). The food is prepared by the women of the household or, at larger community feasts, from general contributions under the supervision of the teungku, and is brought in idangs (trays) to the guests assembled in the seuramoe Mòë (the front verandah of an Acehnese house, to which the uninitiated are admitted), or in the meunasah when the feast is given by the gampong.

The Calendar of Monthly Kanduris

Each of the lunar months has its characteristic kanduri, which gives the month its popular Acehnese name. The succession includes the Kanduri Mo’lot (Rabi’ al-awwal), the Kanduri Apam (Rajab), the Kanduri Bu (Sha’ban — “Rice-kanduri,” the popular name of the eighth month), the Puasa (Ramadhan) and the Leubè raya that closes it, the Kanduri Apam Seulawah or Kanduri Boh Kayèë in Jumada al-akhir, and the Kurubeu’en (Dul-hidjah). These monthly kanduris are given in the meunasah, where the teungku recites the appropriate formulas — meuliku from the dikr at the Mo’lot, the Barzanji in honour of the Prophet’s birth, and the like — before the assembled householders distribute the food. A specially great kanduri is held at the tomb of Teungku Anjong in Gampong Jawa on the 12th of Maulid.

Other annual kanduris are tied to the agricultural calendar — the kanduri blang or “field-feast” that opens the musem ludih blang, and the kanduri laot or “sea-kanduri” of the seine-fishers. Each gampong also holds its own kanduri for the dead, occasional as well as calendrical, and the village teungku is the indispensable consecrator.

Occasional Kanduris and Vows

Beyond the calendar, kanduris are given whenever a religious motive invites one: at the conclusion of a Quran recitation (peutamat daroh), on the appointment of a panglima kawom or uleebalang, at the peusijuek or “cooling” of a new house or a returned traveller, and as vows (kaoy or nazar) for the recovery of the sick. The kanduri held in honour of the dead — called kanduri bu — gives to the eighth month of the Acehnese year (Sha’ban) its popular name “Rice-kanduri.”

The official invitation (meuròh) to a kanduri is always given in the form of an offering of ranub batèë (betel in a copper or silver bowl lined with ornamental cloth), and, where the invitation is addressed to persons of high consideration such as tuankus, the symbolical gift is presented in a more costly sirih-bowl (keureudong) in place of the batèë. Snouck Hurgronje notes that Teungku Tiro was rebuked by his fellow ulamas for lavishing on kanduris and on the repair of chapels money that, in their view, should have been used to erect forts along the linie and to fit out a fleet to harass the Dutch by sea — an indication of how central the institution had become to Acehnese religious and political life alike.

Religious and Social Significance

The kanduri was embedded in the religious calendar. On the ureë raya (Eid feast day, first of Shawwal after Ramadan), many went to visit their family burial places (bhöm), decorating the head of the tomb with flowers (jeumpa, seumanga) and the bungöng peukan (“market-flowers”), burning incense and offering prayers. The kanduri at the meunasah was also a setting for the ratéb saman — the terribly noisy religious litany derived from the saint Samman — and other communal religious activities.

As a social institution, the kanduri expresses at once the commensality of the Muslim community and the Acehnese idea that no important transition — birth, first contact with the earth, circumcision, marriage, voyage, sickness, death — is complete without a religious feast. The kanduri thus occupies in Acehnese life a place midway between the prescribed liturgy of Islam and the purely customary usages of the country.

Sources

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; PPN 395084288. Koninklijke Bibliotheek. Atjeh, door H.C. Zentgraff. Gedrukt bij Drukkerij “De Unie”, 1938, Batavia. OCR-filename: 20260709_002148_DLP-81-Atjeh_OCR.txt.

See Also

Source

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, §§ 3, 5; Chapter II, §§ 1–2.

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