Poewôê siê (in Kreemer’s spelling) is the Atjehnese adat obligation by which a newly-married young man, during the first year of his marriage, was required to bring meat home to his wife on the two ritual slaughter-days before the beginning and at the end of the Vastenmaand (Ramadan fasting month) — the same two slaughter-days known as *maq meugang*. The obligation is recorded in Kreemer’s *De Karbouw* ([[1956)]] (pp. 113-114) and in Snouck Hurgronje’s Snouck Hurgronje’s De Atjehers ([[1893-94)|De Atjehers]] (vol. I, p. 398), and is one of the principal adat institutions linking the buffalo-slaughter complex to the Atjehnese marriage-cycle.
The custom
The poewôê siê passage in De Karbouw (pp. 113-114) reads:
“In Atjeh is het zelfs een door de adat opgelegde plicht, dat de pas in het huwelijk getreden jongeman gedurende het eerste jaar van zijn echt op de feestelijke slachtdagen vóór het begin en bij het einde der Vastenmaand vlees bij zijn vrouw thuisbrengt (poewôê siê). Oorspronkelijk bestond dit gebruik, zoals de naam aangeeft, in een vleesgeschenk, maar later is het vlees door een gave in geld vervangen, waarvan het bedrag afhankelijk is van de grootte van de bruidsschat. Op genoemde feestdagen houdt de Atjeher zijn kinderen liefst thuis, daar ieder, die het maar enigszins doen kan, dan vlees in huis heeft. Liepen de kinderen uit, dan zou men buitenaf denken, dat ze gebrek leden.” The structural elements of the custom are:
- Performer: the newly-married young man, during the first year of his marriage.
- Occasion: the two ritual slaughter-days before the beginning and at the end of the Ramadan fasting month — the same two days known as *maq meugang*.
- Original form: a meat-gift (vleesgeschenk) brought home to the wife. The name poewôê siê itself, as Kreemer notes, “aangeeft” (indicates) this original meat-gift form.
- Later commutation: a money-gift scaled to the size of the bride-price (bruidsschat), in place of the original meat-gift.
- Social-display aspect: on the slaughter-days, the Atjehnese keeps his children at home, since anyone who can afford it has meat in the house on those days; if the children were to be seen out, outsiders would think the family was in want (gebrek leden).
Significance
Poewôê siê is significant for the encyclopedia of Acheh history as a documented instance of the integration of the buffalo-slaughter complex with the Atjehnese marriage-cycle — the slaughter-days that furnished the *teungkoe meunasah*‘s ritual-slaughter fee-system also furnished, in the first year of marriage, the husband’s meat-obligation to his wife. The custom is documented by Snouck Hurgronje in Snouck Hurgronje’s De Atjehers ([[1893-94)|De Atjehers]] and by Kreemer in *Atjeh* (vol. II, pp. 335, 673 nt.) and re-cited in *De Karbouw*. The commutation from a meat-gift to a money-gift scaled to the bride-price documents the monetisation of the Atjehnese adat-economy in the late-colonial period; the social-display aspect (keeping the children at home on the slaughter-days) documents the visibility of the slaughter-complex as a marker of household prosperity in the village economy.
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. 113-114.
De Atjehers, by C. Snouck Hurgronje, 2 vols. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1893-94), vol. I, p. 398. Atjèh, by J. Kreemer, vol. II (1923), pp. 335, 673 nt.