The peusunteng is the Achehnese ceremony of smearing a little yellow glutinous rice (bu kunyèt) behind both ears of a person, performed as a rite of “cooling” and protection on solemn or transitional occasions. The general meaning of the word, like that of its equivalent in Malay (kesunting, “smearing or inserting behind the ears”), is also used to describe the custom so much in vogue among the youth of Acheh of wearing flowers stuck behind their ears; in its technical sense, however, it denotes the smearing with yellow rice for purposes of cooling.
In the full ritual form, the peusunteng follows the peusijuek or cooling with flour and water (teupòng taweue), in which the person is besprinkled by means of a besom formed of three “cooling” plants — sisijue, manè’-manòe, and naleu’eng sambo — dipped in the flour-and-water mixture. After the cooling, the officiant (in family rites usually an old woman of the household) and the other old women present rub yellow glutinous rice behind the ears of the subject. Both acts together constitute the ritual warding-off of evil influences that might attach to a person at a dangerous transition: at the andam and ear-piercing of a bride, at the appointment of a panglima kawom or uleebalang, at the circumcision of a child, at the conclusion of a Quran recitation, and on similar occasions.
The ear-piercing of a young maiden furnishes a typical example. The expert who is to perform the operation first besprinkles her with the cooling plants dipped in flour and water, in the presence of the other old women of the household; finally both she and her companions perform the peusunteng, rubbing the yellow rice behind the girl’s ears. Only then does the expert bore the holes with a thorn or a golden needle. So, too, when a pupil has reached the tamal — that is, has completed the recitation of the whole Quran to the teacher’s satisfaction — the parents send a dish of bu kunyèt with little cakes of rice-flour (ketan) and cheuneuruet, a sort of gelatinous network of the same kind of rice, or grated cocoanut and sugar (u mirah), for the “cooling of the Quran,” as they express it; the same dish accompanies the boy’s circumcision.
The peusunteng may also be performed alone, without the preliminary flour-and-water cooling, in cases of lesser urgency. A child that has fallen from the steps of the house is simply smeared behind the ears with a little clay from the hearth — the simplest and most domestic form of the rite — to avert the evil consequences of the fall. In its full ceremonial form the rite is one of the fixed constituents of Achehnese life-cycle ritual, together with the peusijuek that precedes it and the kanduri or religious feast with which such rites are usually closed.
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.