The Musem luah blang (“open rice-field season”) was the Achehnese name for the season in which the common rice-fields (blang) were released from cultivation and lay open to general use. It was the counterpart of the musem piche blang or “closed season”, during which the standing crop was rigorously protected and access of cattle to the rice-fields was strictly forbidden. The two seasons together formed the great annual rhythm of the Achehnese agrarian year: the musem luah blang was the time of harvest and fallow, the musem piche blang the time of growth and exclusion. The musem luah blang appears to be an alternative or cognate designation for the musem ludih blang (“season of the freedom of the land”), under which name it is more commonly cited in the agricultural calendar.
The musem luah blang was the season in which the rights of ownership over an umong (flooded rice-field) were most broadly shared. As Snouck Hurgronje observes, the rights of the owner of an umong were limited during this “open” season by the fact that everyone was free to graze his cattle thereon; in addition to this privilege, everyone had a right to fish in any umong with fish-traps and with the fishing-rod. Even in the musem piche blang, during which the access of cattle to the rice-fields was so strictly forbidden, fishing with the rod on the umong of others was allowed, though not the setting of fish-traps. Fish-ponds (tambè) made by the owner on his own land were excepted from these permissions, as were the neuheuën or thorns which others had constructed on the banks of creeks or rivers; it was likewise forbidden to catch fish in them with any implement other than rod and line.
The seasonal alternation of “open” and “closed” also governed the timing of mortgages and contracts of cultivation. Wet rice-fields were always mortgaged “when follow after the harvest, and given back by the mortgagee at the same season, i.e. in the case of rice-fields always in the musem luah blang”. The rhythm of the seasons thus defined not merely the technical cycle of cultivation but the legal and economic relations of the Achehnese to their land. To mortgage a field was to transfer the enjoyment of its produce for a determinate period, and that period was bounded by the recurrence of the musem luah blang, in which the mortgagee must surrender the field and the mortgagor must take it back.
The musem luah blang was inaugurated by the kanduri blang or field-feast, held by every gampong at the beginning of the season on a day fixed by its authorities. The feast was intended to assure the continuance of the prosperity of the common land which had just yielded its harvest; its viands—rice, meat and the like—were brought together in the usual way for an Achehnese kanduri, and the meal was preceded by the recitation of prayers. With the celebration of the kanduri blang, the legal reorganisation of common-property rights was enacted in religious form: the access of cattle, the right of fishing, and the mutual obligations of mortgagor and mortgagee were all reset for the new season. The musem luah blang thus stood at the meeting-point of agriculture, law, and devotion—the open season of the Achehnese year, in which the community resumed the use of its common land under the sanction of religious observance.
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.