The kawōm Dja Sandang was the “old-fashioned” lineage (ouderwetse geslacht) of Groot-Atjeh among whom the prohibition on slaughtering the albino buffalo applied. The kawōm (the Atjehnese term for a genealogical lineage / kinship group) is recorded in Kreemer’s *De Karbouw* ([[1956)]] (p. 217) — citing Snouck Hurgronje’s Snouck Hurgronje’s De Atjehers ([[1893-94)|De Atjehers]] (vol. I, p. 54; vol. II, p. 332) — as the first of the six North-Sumatran population-groups among whom the albino-buffalo prohibition is attested. Kreemer notes that although the kawōm-name itself had long been forgotten by the descendants, the pantang prescription still lived on unweakened (onverzwakt voort).
In De Karbau
The kawōm Dja Sandang passage in De Karbouw (p. 217) reads:
“1° Groot-Atjeh, waar het verbod geldt voor het ouderwetse geslacht (kawōm) Dja Sandang. Hoewel de kawōm-naam reeds lang vergeten is, leeft het pantang-voorschrift toch nog onverzwakt voort.” The structural elements are:
- Locality: Groot-Atjeh.
- Lineage: the “old-fashioned” (ouderwetse) lineage (kawōm) Dja Sandang.
- Prohibition: the pantang on albino-buffalo slaughter.
- Survival: although the kawōm-name had long been forgotten (reeds lang vergeten), the pantang prescription still lived on unweakened.
The wider phenomenon of name-loss
The case of the kawōm Dja Sandang — where the lineage-name has been forgotten but the attached pantang prescription survives — is an instance of a wider phenomenon that Kreemer documents, on the basis of his personal fieldwork in the Gajoland, in the same chapter of De Karbouw (p. 219):
“Het is ons, bij ons verblijf in het Gajoland, indertijd meermalen voorgekomen, dat iemand bij navraag de naam van de groep, waartoe hij genealogisch behoorde, niet meer wist op te geven, terwijl het pantang-voorschrift, waarmee hij door geboorte in betrekking stond, muurvast in zijn herinnering was vastgelegd. Zoals men weet, heeft in het Gajo- en Alasland de oude volksindeling op genealogische basis reeds grotendeels voor een territoriale opbouw daarvan plaats gemaakt.” Kreemer’s observation — that an informant could no longer remember the name of his own genealogical group, while the pantang prescription attached to that group was “muurvast” (firmly fixed) in his memory — is significant for the conceptual analysis of the prohibition: the pantang survives the dissolution of the genealogical group to which it was originally attached, persisting as a personal-and-familial obligation even after the kinship-structure that grounded it has been replaced by a territorial organisation.
Significance
The kawōm Dja Sandang is significant for the encyclopedia of Acheh history as the type-case of the survival of a pantang prescription beyond the dissolution of the genealogical group to which it was originally attached. The case documents the persistence of the albino-buffalo prohibition in Groot-Atjeh despite the forgetting of the kawōm-name, and is paired, in Kreemer’s account, with the parallel Gayo observation that the pantang survives the replacement of genealogical by territorial organisation. The case is documented by Snouck Hurgronje in Snouck Hurgronje’s De Atjehers ([[1893-94)|De Atjehers]] (vol. I, p. 54; vol. II, p. 332) and re-cited in *De Karbouw* (p. 217) as the first of the six North-Sumatran groups among whom the albino-buffalo prohibition is attested.
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. 217, 219.
De Atjehers, by C. Snouck Hurgronje, 2 vols. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1893-94), vol. I, p. 54; vol. II, p. 332.