The mupho was an adat observed on the West Coast of Aceh in connection with funerals, and one which the pious looked on with strong disfavour. Some five or six days after a death, men, women and girls assembled together in the house of the deceased, the walls of which were partly removed for the occasion. There the women and girls performed a characteristic dance in which they raised one leg repeatedly, an action accompanied by the recitation of pantons (pantons) that were often very far from decent in their purport. The performers kept by them ready-made sirih quids, which they distributed to their favourites among the male audience.
Relation to ordinary Achehnese funerary custom
The mupho stood in marked contrast to the restrained Achehnese mode of mourning described elsewhere by Snouck Hurgronje. In the ordinary gampong, condolence visits (kunyong) lasted up to seven days, during which the men were received beneath the house in the yubōh (the space under the floor) while the women paid their tributes of sympathy within. Oratory, so much cultivated at Achehnese feasts, was conspicuously absent at funerals, and a single artificial wail — the pitinoe or pubac — made by a female relation on the arrival of a guest, was the limit of expressive demonstration. Against this sober background, the half-dismantled house, the one-legged dance, the indecent pantons and the gift of sirih quids to favoured males gave the mupho the air of a secular revel rather than of a religious observance.
Condemnation by the pious
The disfavour with which the mupho was regarded by pious Mohammedans placed it among those popular observances — like the rateb pulet and rateb sadati that simply borrowed the name and noise of religious litanies — which the ulamas tolerated only as an unavoidable concession to the temper of the people. Its exclusively West-Coast character suggests a survival from a pre-Mohammedan stratum of custom that had been more thoroughly overlaid in Great Acheh itself. The partly-demolished house in which the mupho took place corresponded to the stage of funerary rites at which the dwelling of the dead man was already beginning to be broken up, and the assembly may once have carried a meaning of mourning that the licentious panton and the free distribution of sirih had long obscured.
Place in Achehnese custom
Snouck Hurgronje cites the mupho as an example of the way in which adat could run directly counter to the spirit of Islamic observance, and yet maintain itself by the strength of local feeling. Its condemnation by the pious also marked the constant tension, so characteristic of Achehnese religious life, between the popular ceremonials of the gampong and the stricter practice enjoined by the hukom.
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.