The setting up of the raja and putroe pillars was the inaugural ceremony of Achehnese house-building, by which the two principal posts of the house, with the cross-beams that united them, were set up amidst the recitation of sundry prayers and formulas. The two posts were called the raja (“prince”) and the putroe (“princess”), and when the house was completed they stood in the juree, the central room. For them the soundest and best wood was selected; the raja was first set up and then the putroe. The ceremony was one of the most important in the Achehnese cycle of building, and its propitiousness was held to determine the fortune of the whole undertaking.
The ceremony
A favourable time for commencing to build was carefully chosen. The work always began with the setting up of the two principal posts with the cross-beams that united them; while this was in progress, sundry prayers and formulas were repeated. Should the ceremonies at the setting up of the principal pillars prove propitious for continuing to build, then as soon as the house was finished a lucky day was again chosen for moving into it. On this occasion a kanduri or religious feast was given, to which the teungku of the meunasah and some leubes were invited. After this gathering there commenced the customary “cooling” (peulilōk or peusijue’), by which the new house was formally inaugurated.
Symbolism of the raja and putroe
The names of the two principal posts — raja and putroe, “prince” and “princess” — expressed the social and sexual symbolism that pervaded Achehnese domestic architecture. At a wedding, Snouck Hurgronje notes, the bridegroom took his place next the “prince” post, while the bride occupied a seat under the “princess.” The two posts thus stood for the two sexes in their proper relation, the prince-post bearing the masculine and the princess-post the feminine side of the household. Their union in the cross-beam at the moment of setting-up signified the foundation of the house upon the union of husband and wife, and the prayers that accompanied the operation were directed to the prosperity of that union.
The house as a microcosm
The setting up of the raja and putroe pillars placed the house, from its very foundation, in the centre of a network of magico-religious observance. The favour of the spirits of the site had to be secured, the omens observed, the formulas recited; the coolness that followed the completion of the house was a prolongation of the cooling that accompanied the setting-up of the principal posts. The same “cooling” (peusijue’) that was used at births, at marriages, at the piiphon padi or planting-out of the padi, and at every other crisis of domestic or communal life, was applied to the new house at the moment of its inauguration. The ceremony of the principal posts thus opened a sequence of observances that continued until the house was not merely built, but ritually established.
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.