Pasar week in Atjeh — the five-day market week (pasar week) that, alongside the Islamic seven-day week, structures the Atjehnese reckoning of time — is the dual-calendar system recorded in Prof. Dr. Kernkamp’s chapter De invloed van den Islam in Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk (1946). The five-day pasar week is the indigenous Atjeh (and wider Malay-Indonesian) cycle of market days, in which each day is named for one of five market-places; the Islamic seven-day week, by contrast, is the religious cycle inherited from the Arabic Muslim calendar. The two cycles run in parallel, and their interaction generates the characteristic “selapan” cycle of 35 days.
Kernkamp’s account
Kernkamp introduces the pasar week in the course of his discussion of the Islamic calendar’s interaction with indigenous Indonesian time-reckoning. His wording: “Sometimes one also connects the ecclesiastical and the civil calendar. Thus on Java the ‘geboortedag’ falls after 35 days (selapan), because that day bears the same name in both the pasar week of 5 days and the Muslim week of 7 days.” The same selapan cycle — the 35-day period after which the pasar week and the Muslim week return to the same combination of names — governs, in Kernkamp’s account, the timing of the Javanese geboortedag (the return of the birth-day after 35 days) and the associated slametan (the religious meal given to mark the occasion).
The pasar week is, in Atjeh as in Java, the older indigenous cycle alongside which the Islamic seven-day week has been adopted. The five-day cycle governs the market-days of the Atjeh village; the seven-day cycle governs the religious observances of the Atjeh Muslim. The two cycles coexist in Atjehnese time-reckoning, each governing a different domain of life — the pasar week the commercial and agricultural, the Muslim week the religious.
Significance for Atjeh
For the Atjeh-focused reader, the pasar week is significant as one of the surviving pre-Islamic Atjehnese time-reckoning systems. The same survival is documented in the Soerat te’h (Atjeh divination book), in the use of Scorpio and the Pleiades for the agricultural year, and in the *pen* concept in ear-piercing and gravestone-placing. The pasar week thus belongs to the wider complex of pre-Islamic Atjehnese conceptions of time that, in Kernkamp’s chapter, are shown to coexist with — and to interact with — the Islamic lunar calendar.
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
- slametan — peace-making meal
- selapan — 35-day cycle
- pasar — market
- pen — open/wide (Atjeh concept)
- Atjeh — Aceh
- Atjehsch — Acehnese (adjective)
- Acheh — Aceh
- Java — Java
- Prof. Dr. — Professor Doctor
- Dr. — Doctor
See Also
- Atjeh calendar constellations
- Soerat te’h
- Pen (Atjeh)
- Atjeh 11th month marriage taboo
- Friday prohibitions
- Kadar night
- 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. 87 (chapter De invloed van den Islam door Prof. Dr. W. J. A. Kernkamp).