The peujamee (also spelled peujamè; from the Malay penjamè, rendered by C. Snouck Hurgronje as “guest-meal”) is the Achehnese term for a feast offered to specially honoured guests, as distinguished from a kanduri or religious feast. As Hurgronje explains, in his discussion of the wedding feast, “the adat lays down fixed rules for the arrangement of these idangs, especially in connection with wedding feasts. The same rules hold good for the idangs of the Feast of the Birthday of Mohammad, and for what are called ‘guest-meals,’ i. e. feasts offered to specially honoured guests. These, however, are not in any sense of religious character, nor are they, like kanduris, marked by the recitation of selections from the Quran or litanies with final prayer.”
The distinction between kanduri and peujamee is a constant one in Achehnese etiquette. A kanduri is consecrated by the recitation of the Quran or of litanies, followed by a final prayer, and is offered for a religious occasion — a feast of the calendar, a feast for the dead, the conclusion of a Quran recitation, the cooling of a new house. A peujamee, by contrast, is offered for a purely social occasion — to honoured guests, at a wedding, on the visit of a son-in-law or daughter-in-law. The same idangs (the trays of food) are used, and the same rules of arrangement apply; what distinguishes the two is the presence or absence of the religious consecration.
The peujamee is also the term used in a specific connection with the reconciliation of a husband and wife after a divorce. Where a man has pronounced a single talaq against his wife in anger and afterwards repents, the ulama declares that “only one talaq has ‘fallen,’” and that the reconciliation may be set aside — but adds “that the reconciliation should be consecrated by giving a feast to a number of devout poor (peujamee paki), and this is generally done.” The peujamee paki is thus a guest-meal offered to the poor, in lieu of the religious feast which would mark a more formal reconciliation; it stands at the borderline between the secular and the religious, and is the means by which an irregular reconciliation is given a public and charitable sanction.
In the ordinary social usage, the peujamee was the standard form of hospitality offered to honoured guests. As Hurgronje describes in the chapter on marriage, the parents and other blood-relations of a married pair, when they visit one another for important events in the families on either side, “each bring a present of a dollar or two by way of contribution to defray the expenses of the ceremonies. Those who receive such visits, on the other hand, are bound to entertain their guests in the best possible style [penjamee] with the traditional idangs.” The peujamee was thus the name both for the formal entertainment of guests on ceremonial occasions and for the style in which such entertainment was offered. Its institutional separation from the kanduri — by the absence of religious consecration — marks, in Achehnese etiquette, the boundary between the social and the religious hospitality.
See Also
- Kanduri (general)
- Talaq (Ach. taleuë)
- Ruju’
- Me tanda kong narit (betrothal gift ceremony)
- Peusijuk (cooling)
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.