The keunong system is the Achehnese method of seasonal reckoning based on the conjunctions of the moon with the constellation Scorpio (bintang kala). The word keunong (Malay kena) means “hit” or “come into contact with,” and denotes the moment when the moon appears anywhere within the Scorpion. The system constitutes the civil or season calendar of an agricultural people, parallel to the ecclesiastical lunar year that follows the phases of the moon, and it regulates the principal tasks of agriculture, navigation, and the fisheries throughout the solar year.
Between every two successive keunongs there is an interval of 27⅓ days, so that on an average 13.363 keunongs occur in the course of the solar year — most years containing thirteen, some fourteen. The interval separating the keunong from the preceding new moon is greatest in the first month of the European solar year, and decreases constantly by two or three days at a time as the months pass, since the actual lunar month (29.5302 days) is always two to three days longer than the period between two keunongs (27.3333 days). In November the difference is smallest; the keunong almost coincides with the new moon, while the following keunong just precedes it, so that the difference is then a minus quantity. The data were kindly supplied to Snouck Hurgronje by Dr. S. Figee at Batavia, who based his calculations on the supposition that Antares, the brightest star of the Scorpion, was the star specially selected for observation.
The Achehnese have compressed this astronomy into a fixed series of uneven numbers — 23, 21, 19, 17, 15, 13, 11, 9, 7, 5, 3, 1 — which give the days of the lunar month on which the successive keunongs are deemed to fall, approximately corresponding to the European months January through December. The choice of uneven numbers reflects the Achehnese (and wider Mohammedan) preference for odd numbers, which Allah is regarded as specially favouring. The inaccuracy of this fixed series hardly impairs the true purpose of the reckoning, which is the knowledge of the seasons. About once in three years — as often as the keunong phenomenon exhibits itself fourteen times in a solar year — one keunong more than usual must be counted, so as not to come into conflict with the calendar of the solar year written on the heavens in terms of keunongs.
This necessary correction is made by the Achehnese in a purely empirical fashion. Each keunong in the series has its own name and brings to mind the recurrence of certain definite natural phenomena — winds, rains, the flowering of particular plants — and the definite tasks of agriculture or navigation whose performance is limited to that time, as well as certain feasts held therein. In this way the keunong system continues to fulfil, in the absence of any official double calendar such as that of the Turks, the function which the solar year fulfils in more regulated Mohammedan states.
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.