The Meunyaba is an Achehnese female lamentation custom in which a woman, on the death of a child, a brother or sister, or of her parents, mentions the deceased with endearing epithets and descriptions of his or her virtues. As C. Snouck Hurgronje records in his chapter on the funeral customs of the Achehnese, the meunyaba must be carefully distinguished from the more general acts of weeping (mo’ë) and lamenting (ba). It is, in effect, the formal encomium of the deceased delivered by a female relative — a chanted or spoken enumeration of endearing phrases, of which the typical examples are “my heart, the apple of mine eye” (ateku, hijïh mataku). The meunyaba is performed only on the death of a child, a sibling, or a parent; on the death of a husband, it is prohibited by feminine modesty.
The meunyaba belongs to the wider complex of Achehnese mourning customs by which the survivors discharge their duty to the dead. As Hurgronje explains, there must be no weeping in the presence of the dying, but the Achehnese adat requires that when death supervenes all present should wail aloud in chorus; this cry of lamentation also serves as an announcement of the death to the neighbours. The meunyaba is distinct from this chorus-wail: it is a more formal, more deliberate act, by which a female relative gives structured expression to the loss, and it belongs to the days following the death rather than to the moment of decease itself. The two together — the chorus-wail at the moment of death and the meunyaba in the days that follow — make up the female share of Achehnese mourning.
The prohibition of the meunyaba on the death of a husband is one of the more striking features of the custom. As Hurgronje explains, it is “prohibited by feminine modesty” — a phrase which points to the Achehnese conception of the proper relation between a wife and her husband. A woman may lament her parents, her children and her siblings with the most endearing of epithets, since these are relations in which affection may be openly expressed; but the relation between husband and wife is hedged about with a reserve which forbids such public declaration of attachment. The meunyaba thus affords a curious glimpse into the Achehnese code of conjugal decorum: the wife who has lost her husband may weep and lament, but she may not publicly enumerate his virtues or address him in endearing terms.
On the West Coast of Acheh, the meunyaba is associated with a more elaborate and more disreputable custom known as muphö. As Hurgronje records, some five or six days after a death, men, women and girls assemble together in the house, the walls of which are partly removed. The women and girls perform a dance in which they raise one (or both) of their legs; the men look on, and select from among the dancers such as take their fancy, with whom they afterwards form temporary connections. The muphö is looked on with strong disfavour by the pious, but it illustrates the wider context in which the meunyaba is set: the lamentation of the dead may, in some parts of Acheh, expand into a more generalised ceremonial of grief and licence, of which the meunyaba is the most respectable and most universally observed element.
The meunyaba is one of the few Achehnese customs in which the female voice takes precedence over the male in the formal observance of mourning. The male relatives conduct the burial itself, the kanduri of those returning from the grave, and the subsequent memorial feasts; but the formal lamentation of the deceased, the act by which the loss is given public and structured expression, is the prerogative of the women. In this, as in much else, the Achehnese funeral customs exhibit a careful division of labour between the sexes, in which the men are responsible for the public and ceremonial acts of mourning, and the women for its emotional and commemorative expression.
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.