The thirhōm idja (also thithrōm idja) — literally “one throw of the idja,” the slendang or shoulder-cloth rolled up tightly and cast once — was the Atjehnese measure, reckoned at about twenty-five metres, defining the extent of the priority right which the possessor of a sawah could assert over adjoining ground at the head of his field.
The priority right
Possessors of rice fields could assert priority rights against a new clearer only over a piece of ground not destined for rice cultivation, situated at the oeloe — the head-end, the higher-lying part — of the sawah. The purpose of this recognition of priority was to reserve for the cultivator a place for a veldhuisje (a small dwelling in the field), a watch-house and the like.
The measure
The reserve extended, with that purpose in view, over a maximum distance of one thirhōm idja — the distance of a single throw of the tightly rolled shoulder-cloth, that is twenty-five metres — reckoned from the kepala (head) of the sawah.
Limitation: not beyond the ateueng
The priority right was granted only over ground not destined or to be destined for rice cultivation, and not over ground suitable for the extension of a sawah complex. It therefore did not apply to sawah’s situated in the middle of a complex. The Atjehnese expressed the limit thus: “dit recht wordt niet toegekend buiten de ateueng” — this right is not granted beyond the little rice-field dikes. D. W. N. de Boer explained that the phrase was self-evident to an Atjehnese, since an ateueng is a separation between a rice field and adjoining land of like kind, whereas no ateuengs are used where the sawah passes into a mountain slope, hilly terrain or ladang ground.
Revision in Sawang, 1917
In some districts the oeléëbalang revised the size of this reserve and at the same time fixed it in a more usual measure of length. Thus in Sawang, onderafdeeling (subdivision) Lho’ Seumaweh, it was fixed from 1917 at only eight metres.
See Also
Source
Het recht op den grond in Atjeh, by D. W. N. de Boer, dated Scheveningen, November 1931, pp. 59-80. Offprint DLP-141, Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, ‘s-Gravenhage; Bibliotheek KITLV accession 0060 4460 60 081470 428.