Both lanchang (literally “setting afloat of a lanchang,” a small boat or raft) is an Achehnese apotropaic ceremony employed both in cases of individual illness and — formerly, on a grand scale — as a public rite to combat epidemic disease. The custom is described by C. Snouck Hurgronje in The Achehnese in his chapter on superstitions connected with sickness and disease. A parallel rite exists in the Malay peninsula, where the same word lanchang is used in the north for the boat; in the south it is called raung.
The Small Lanchang for Individual Illness
Lanchangs on a small scale are set afloat in case of individual illnesses. The process is as follows. A rectangular piece is cut from a betelnut spathe, folded and stitched tight on three sides, and kept open by means of a cross-piece attached to its upper edges, so that it roughly resembles a boat; a sort of mast is also fixed in it. In this little vessel are placed various sweetmeats (peugajah), sirih, a live hen, two raw eggs, boiled glutinous rice, flowers, and a piece of white cotton. It is then taken to the river or to the padi-fields — in which last case it is deposited at a spot where three or four ways meet (seumpang lhe’è or peunèt). All this is carried out under the orders of a woman skilled in medicinal art (inòng ulèë) who herself conveys the lanchang to its destination.
She first causes the patient to eat some of the sweetmeats; the other objects are moved backwards and forwards over the patient’s head with solemn reckoning ending in a long-drawn tujōh bōlih! (“seven!”), and then placed in the boat. The bōlih cry — “seven” being a number of peculiar ritual significance — punctuates the act of separation, by which the illness is symbolically loaded into the boat and sent away.
The Great Lanchang against Epidemics
Another preventive of epidemics, employed “so to speak officially” in Acheh in earlier times, was the both lanchang on a grand scale. When an epidemic prevailed, the Sultan would command a great lanchang built of wood or bamboo and furnished with a quantity of rice and meat. A pretended human sacrifice to the sea was also made: some poor man who was willing to play the part of victim for a few dollars was placed on board the boat and set off to drift down the Acheh river and out of the kuala (the river-mouth). At the river’s mouth he would manage to regain the shore, leaving the rice and meat to their strife with the waves. The bantu or evil spirit which caused the epidemic was supposed to sail away in the boat, taking the pestilence with it.
Place in Achehnese Folk Religion
The both lanchang belongs to that stratum of Achehnese folk religion in which Islamic formulae overlay an older substratum of animistic and Hindu-Javanese practice. It stands alongside other curious methods of preventing and resisting epidemics: on Pulo Breueh (Bras) an old karieng-tree — the “Ja Karieng” — was believed to have the power of enchaining epidemics and letting them loose upon the people at will. Once a year the inhabitants of the island held there a great kanduri, offering up flowers and incense, and taking sea-baths close by; were this festival not observed, it was thought that the coming year would surely be marked by pestilence.
See Also
Source
The Achehnese, Vol. I, by Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje, translated by A.W.S. O’Sullivan, indexed by R.J. Wilkinson. Leyden: E.J. Brill, 1906.