The Keitrenja is the wedding-feast proper of the Achehnese, regarded as concluded only after the morning meal on the seventh day following the marriage. As C. Snouck Hurgronje records in his account of Achehnese marriage customs, the 3rd, 5th, 7th, 10th, 40th, 44th, 50th, 100th and 1000th days after birth, marriage or death are observed throughout the Eastern Archipelago as epochs of importance, and are always marked by some ceremonial observance. In Acheh, the first three of these — the 3rd, 5th and 7th days after marriage — are those most strictly observed, and the keitrenja is the comprehensive name given to the whole festive period of the first seven days, of which the morning meal on the seventh day forms the closing act.
The ceremonial of the keitrenja is conducted on the same general plan throughout. On the 3rd, 5th and 7th days after marriage, the family of the bride offers the bridegroom and his peunganjos (the old women who act as the bride’s attendants) a formal feast, regulated by the same adat that governs all Achehnese wedding feasts. The idangs — the presentation trays containing rice, meat or fish, gule, sambay and sweetmeats — must be very complete, and the adat lays down fixed rules for their arrangement, especially in connection with wedding feasts. The same rules hold good for the idangs of the Birthday of Mohammad and for the so-called “guest-meals” offered to specially honoured guests; these, however, are not in any sense of a religious character, nor are they, like kanduris, marked by the recitation of selections from the Quran or litanies with final prayer.
Throughout the seven days of the keitrenja, the bridal pair are the centre of an elaborate etiquette. At each feast, the male guests are served first, and the women must wait till their lords have finished; the bridal pair have also food served them, and are even requested to eat out of the same dish, though their share of the feast is of course merely nominal. After partaking of this pretended meal, the young pair are smeared behind the ears with yellow glutinous rice — the bride by the bisans (the relatives of her husband), the bridegroom by the peunganjos of the bride. On this occasion the bride receives from each of the bisans a gift in money, about one or two dollars.
The keitrenja is brought to its formal close by a rite of “cooling.” Not until after the morning meal on the seventh day is the wedding-feast regarded as concluded. It follows that at this point the bridal pair require a “cooling” — a final lustration which marks their return from the heightened ceremonial state of the wedding-week to the ordinary condition of married life. For this purpose they both sit down at the entrance of the jureë (the bridal chamber) with their legs stretched out straight in front of them. Boughs of cooling plants are dipped in flour and water, and their feet are besprinkled therewith. The bridegroom alone is smeared behind the ears with yellow glutinous rice, this being done by a peunganjo of the bride. The seunalën — the gift of clothing reciprocated between bride and bridegroom on the seventh day — completes the cycle: the bridegroom, if the gift consists of clothes, is expected by the adat to don them at once and return thus arrayed to his parents’ house. With the cooling and the seunalën, the keitrenja is at an end, and the young couple pass from the ceremonial of the wedding-week into the ordinary life of the household.
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.