The Kanduris of the 3rd, 5th, 7th and 10th Days were the first four in the series of commemorative funeral feasts by which an Achehnese household marked the days immediately following a death. On each of these days the fellow-villagers of the deceased were invited to a kanduri of yellow glutinous rice (bu kunyèt), the meal being preceded by meutamat—the recitation of a portion of the Quran concluded by the khatam-prayer which properly marks the completion of a full recitation of the Sacred Book. The Achehnese names followed the serial numbers of the days: kanduri ureueng lhée (3rd), limong (5th), tujoh (7th) and siploh (10th).
The counting of these days was itself prescribed by adat: the day of burial counted as the first day, so that a funeral on a Tuesday brought the first great kanduri on the Friday, the second on the Sunday following, and so on by the number of nights the corpse had lain in the grave. For the recitation, small books (mukadams), each containing one of the thirty juz’ of the Quran, were distributed among the more learned of the guests as they entered the house. The Achehnese had given to these four days a grimly humorous proverb which reflects the levity of popular fancy: Ureueng lhée mbòe lhée, ureueng limong keunong limong, ureueng tujoh beureuëphöh, ureueng siploh ka ulat pajoh—“The third day (the body) smells, the fifth it swells, the seventh it bursts, the tenth the worms have devoured it”.
On the 7th day the kanduri was required to consist at least in part of apam-cakes, a regulation whose rationale Snouck Hurgronje refers back to the calendar of feasts under the seventh month of the Mohammedan year. The apam-cake was an essential element of the kanduri apam held in Rajab, and its reappearance at the 7th-day funeral kanduri linked the private mourning of the household to the public cycle of communal devotion. The 10th-day kanduri was the last of the four closely-spaced feasts; thereafter the commemorations became more sparse, with small kanduris (kanduri beu’et ban) given only to needy folk on the 30th, the 44th, and the 100th day, and finally at the annual anniversary.
These four kanduris, together with the kanduri of the 44th day and the kanduri of the 100th day, formed the immediate skeleton of Achehnese mourning. They were accompanied throughout by the kumunjong or visits of condolence, which began immediately after death and lasted seven days, and by the chanting of portions of the Quran every morning and afternoon during the first ten days. The bereaved family was expected to bear the cost, though a widow who cherished her husband’s memory often took upon herself voluntarily many of the expenses occasioned by his death—a practice that testifies, in Snouck Hurgronje’s account, to the relatively high position of women in Achehnese society.
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.