The pulang balee (Achehnese, literally “to return the widow”) was a form of marriage by which a widower, on the death of his wife during the period of the janji jinamee or deferred delivery of the dowry, waived his right to recover half of the dowry and chose rather to marry a sister or other near relative of the deceased. In such marriages the jinamee — the agreed dowry that had been mentioned at the original wedding — was named afresh but never paid. The institution thus constituted an Achehnese form of the levirate, by which the alliance between two families was preserved despite the death that had broken the original marriage.
The ha’ balee and the alternative
Should his wife die during the period of the janji jinamee, Snouck Hurgronje explains, the husband in Acheh had the right to only one of two things. He might claim back half of the dowry, a sum known as the ha’ balee (from the Arabic haqq = right, and balee = widow or widower); or he might waive this right and contract a pulang balee marriage with a sister or other near relative of the deceased, in which case the jinamee was mentioned but never paid. The alternative was thus between a partial restitution of property and the continuance of the family alliance. The Achehnese phrase expressed the choice succinctly: mate adoe, pulang balee ngon ngon — “after the younger sister’s death, to make use of the right of wedding her elder sister without paying a dowry,” and vice versa, mate ace, pulang balee ngon adoe.
The position of the widow
A wife who became a widow during the janji jinamee had just as little claim to her legitimate portion, but received in its place a sum of money equal to half of her dowry, while in certain cases the walis of her late husband offered her a suitor for her hand, preferably of the same family. It was only where the husband was very rich, and left behind him few relatives and those very distant ones, that the widow got her proper share. The pulang balee thus operated symmetrically: it could provide a new wife for the widower from his late wife’s family, or a new husband for the widow from her late husband’s; in either case the replacement was kept within the existing alliance, and the unpaid jinamee became the symbolic token of the continuity of the relationship.
Adjacent rules
The rules surrounding the pulang balee were part of the wider law of the janji jinamee. If a woman died during that period, the expenses of laying out the dead body and the funeral feasts were borne by her parents; but propriety required that the widower should politely request his parents-in-law to allow him to bear the cost of one of the kanduris, as for instance that held on the seventh day after death. Sometimes the father of the deceased privately warned his son-in-law not to expend too much money in this way, as any hopes he might cherish of a share in the subsequent distribution of property would be disappointed, and he would get no more than the ha’ balee. Yet even in such cases the husband often gave as costly a feast as he could — a piece of voluntary generosity that may be read as a tacit preliminary to the pulang balee by which the alliance was renewed.
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.