The padiah (Achehnese, from the Arabic fidyah) was the compensation paid on behalf of a deceased Mohammedan for the prayers and fasts which he had neglected during his lifetime. In the Mohammedan law, the duty of performing the five daily prayers (seumeayang) and of observing the fast of Ramadhan was paramount; and the neglect of these obligations for years, without subsequent performance or repentance, created a debt of worship which the Shafi’ite school generally held could not be discharged by vicarious compensation. Some Shafi’ite authorities, however, took a more accommodating view, and permitted the payment of fidyah by the heirs of the deceased out of his estate as an imperative debt.
The Achehnese practice
In Acheh, Snouck Hurgronje observes, there were plenty of people who at their death left no small number of such neglected obligations unredeemed. The piety of the heirs was seldom equal to the cost of discharging the debt; and their covetousness was just as great, so that in many cases they declared the matter incapable of calculation, and averred that though the deceased had neglected his chief religious obligations for years, he had left no account of his omissions.
Nevertheless it sometimes occurred in Acheh also that padiah (as it was called by the Achehnese) for neglected prayers and fasts was paid out of the estate as an imperative debt, especially where the amount due could be fairly accurately fixed. As the name padiah (i.e. fidyah) implies, the idea involved was that of a compensation, without resort to taqlīd (the blind following of a master’s opinion): the custom was to give a quantity of rice, which was repurchased repeatedly from its recipient. Cases of “farming out” the galats (i.e. neglected obligations) were also to be met with, but these were likewise called padiah in the vernacular.
The Java farce
In the districts of Java where the custom of paying fidyah prevailed, the practice took a peculiarly farcical form. Ten trusted recipients would be selected from among the learned and pious. The executor would then say to them, in effect:
“Our deceased relative has left a debt of so many prayers and fasts unredeemed. We have brought you the sum of (say) 200 guilders, on the understanding that this sum will be accepted in due form for the purpose named, but will in fact be immediately handed back again. This we shall repeat ten times, and the debt will thus be paid through our co-operation. All we ask for ourselves is the 200 guilders, that the oldest and wisest among us may distribute it as is right and just.”
The purse containing the money was then passed from hand to hand with the usual formal gift, acceptance and return, until the agreed number of repetitions had been completed and the debt was held to be discharged. Sometimes the play had a less agreeable ending: Snouck Hurgronje reports the case of an Arab in Bantèn who, invited to a funeral feast, witnessed for the first time this method of distributing the fidyah; when the purse came to him in his turn, he duly accepted the money, but absolutely refused to restore it, despite all representations based on the adat. “The chance of profit proved too strong for him!”
Place in inheritance law
After all debts (including any padiah) had been deducted from the total sum at which the estate was valued, the uleëbalang directed the kali (or some other ulama whose services were available) to reckon up the portions of the various heirs. Hence the Mohammedan law mainly controlled the Achehnese law of inheritance, while padiah was one of the few specifically religious obligations that could intrude upon the otherwise purely secular administration of a deceased person’s estate.
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.