The Ma meugang is the great slaughter of cattle which precedes the commencement of the fasting month of Ramadhan in Acheh. As C. Snouck Hurgronje records in his chapter on the religious life of the Achehnese, the ma meugang is the season at which buffaloes vowed for sick children are purchased and given as a present to the teungku of the village. It is one of the principal occasions of the year for the slaughter of cattle in Acheh, and as such it forms a natural complement to the Great Feast of Sacrifices (the ʽĪd al-Aḍḥā) and the smaller kanduris at which a buffalo is slaughtered for the feast.
The ma meugang is closely connected with the Achehnese practice of vowing offerings for the recovery of a sick child. Such vows — Hurgronje enumerates a great many forms — are a standard means by which an Achehnese parent seeks to secure the intercession of the supernatural on behalf of an ailing child. The vows include taking the child round to seven different mosques and washing its head with water from the reservoir of each, having the whole Quran recited by a leube, taking the child to “44 saints” (i.e. visiting 44 holy tombs), and — most expensively — giving “a kanduri of seven head of buffalo.” The buffaloes vowed in this last form are purchased at the ma meugang and given as a present to the teungku of the village, who then performs the pious task of consecrating the offering.
The ma meugang thus serves two purposes at once. It is, in the first place, the seasonal occasion for the slaughter of cattle before the fast — a kind of lay ʽĪd al-Aḍḥā by which the Achehnese lay in a supply of meat for the days of abstinence that are to come. It is, in the second place, the appointed moment for the fulfilment of vows made during the previous year for the recovery of sick children, and the teungku of each village receives at this season the buffaloes which his parishioners have pledged for the health of their offspring. The two purposes are not unconnected: the fasting month is, throughout the Mohammedan world, a season at which the merit of pious works is believed to be especially great, and the fulfilment of a vow at the ma meugang is therefore both timely and effective.
The position of the ma meugang immediately before the commencement of Ramadhan gives it a natural place in the Achehnese calendar of feasts. It is the last great act of feasting before the month of abstinence begins, and it is followed, after the fast itself, by the ʽĪd al-Fiṭr (the Raya or “feasting month” of Shawwal) and the ʽĪd al-Aḍḥā of the pilgrimage month. The Achehnese year is thus punctuated by a succession of slaughters and feasts, of which the ma meugang is one of the most domestic and the most directly connected with the welfare of children. It illustrates the way in which the universal observances of Islam — the fast of Ramadhan, the feasts of the two ʽĪds — are interwoven, in Achehnese practice, with the particular devotions of household and village, so that the entry of the fasting month is marked not only by the prescribed abstinence but by the slaughter of cattle for the recovery of the sick.
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.