Rangkang

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tagsconcept, institution, religious, architecture, achehnese, village-chapel, education, comparative, mellema-1947
aliasesRangkang, Rangkang (Atjeh), Rangkang prayer-house, Rangkang chapel, Atjeh rangkang, Rangkang as alternative for meunasah, Rangkang/rangkng

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Rangkang — in Mellema’s spelling also rangkng — is the alternative Atjehnese name, recorded by R. L. Mellema in De Islaam in Indonesië (in het bijzonder op Java) (Amsterdam, 1947), for the village prayer-house in which the returned haddji might settle as goeroe (religious teacher) and give elementary religious instruction. Mellema lists the rangkang alongside the better-known meunasah as the Atjehnese equivalent of the regional names by which the village prayer-house is known across the archipelago: the langgar of middle-Java, the tajjeg of Soenda, and the soerau of middle-Sumatra. The entry is thus the source for the alternative designation of the Atjehnese village chapel in the comparative ethnology of Indonesian Islam.

Mellema’s account

In his chapter on Godsdienstonderwijs in Indonesië (Religious education in Indonesia), Mellema describes the trajectory of the haddji — the pilgrim returned from Mekka — who, having spent some years in the holy city in the study of the law and the faith, may feel called to impart his newly acquired knowledge to his “onwetende landgenoten” (ignorant compatriots). Such a man, Mellema writes, “vestigt zich dan ergens als godsdienstleraar (goeroe) en kan onderwijs geven in het dorpsbedehuis” — settles somewhere as a religious teacher (goeroe) and may give instruction in the village prayer-house. He then enumerates the regional names of that building:

“in midden-Java langgar geheten, in Soenda ‘tajjeg’ in midden-Sumatra ‘soerau’ en in Atjeh bekend als ‘meunasah’ of ‘rangkng’.”

That is: in middle-Java called langgar, in Soenda tajjeg, in middle-Sumatra soerau, and in Atjeh known as meunasah or rangkang. The enumeration is comparative: Mellema’s purpose is to establish that the same institution — the village building in which elementary religious instruction is given — bears different names in different parts of the archipelago, and that in Atjeh it bears two names, meunasah and rangkang, used apparently interchangeably.

Relation to the meunasah

The meunasah is the institution more fully treated in Snouck Hurgronje’s De Atjehers, where it is described as the communal building at the heart of every gampong, serving simultaneously as a men’s sleeping hall, a rest-house for strangers, a house of prayer, and a place of assembly for village affairs. Snouck Hurgronje derives meunasah from Arabic madrasah via Malay surau. Mellema’s rangkang is the alternative name for the same building, or for a closely related building, in the context of religious education; the double naming (meunasah of rangkang) suggests either a regional variation within Atjeh or a functional distinction (the building as chapel versus the building as school) that Mellema does not further elaborate.

Mellema notes that all buildings of this class — langgar, tajjeg, soerau, meunasah, rangkang — are recognisable by “het spitse, gestapelde dak” (the steep, tiered roof), the characteristic stacked-roof form that Mellema, earlier in the survey, has traced back to the pre-Islamic Indonesian community-house (the balai or bale). The rangkang thus shares with the meunasah the architectural lineage that connects the village prayer-house to the older Indonesian tradition of the piled, tiered-roof communal building.

The comparative point

Mellema’s enumeration of the regional names is made in the service of a comparative argument: that the village prayer-house, as the locus of elementary religious education under a returned haddji, is an institution common to the Muslim archipelago, but that it bears different names in different regions. The Atjehnese double name — meunasah and rangkang — is, in this comparative frame, the Atjehnese instance of the pan-Indonesian pattern. The rangkang thus enters the AcehWiki corpus as the alternative name by which the Atjehnese village chapel is known in Mellema’s comparative ethnology, and as a term that future entries on the meunasah and on Atjehnese religious education should capture as an alias.

Significance

For AcehWiki, rangkang is significant as the alternative Atjehnese designation for the village prayer-house recorded by a mid-twentieth-century comparative source independent of Snouck Hurgronje. The term is not prominent in Snouck’s monograph, where meunasah is the standard term; Mellema’s record of rangkang as a co-equal name is thus a distinctive contribution of the 1947 survey. The entry also illustrates the comparative method by which Mellema sets the Atjehnese institutions alongside the Javanese, Sundanese, and Sumatran, and it furnishes an alias that should be captured in any comprehensive treatment of the meunasah and of Atjehnese religious education.

See Also

Source

De Islaam in Indonesië (in het bijzonder op Java), by Drs. R. L. Mellema. Mededeling No. LXXVII, Afd. Volkenkunde No. 25. Amsterdam: Koninklijke Vereniging “Indisch Instituut,” 1947. “Godsdienstonderwijs in Indonesië,” p. 39; and Register, s.v. meunasah and rangkang.

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