The late Chief of Lho’ Kruet (also written Lho’-Kruet) was a West-Coast chief of Acheh whose name is preserved in Snouck Hurgronje’s account principally through a singularly distinctive form of punishment that he is said to have applied. He is one of the Achehnese uleebalangs cited by way of illustration of the way in which arbitrary punishments — “often elaborated and inflicted by the chiefs” — were devised in Acheh and its dependencies, as in other Mohammedan countries, outside the formal framework of either the hukom (religious law) or the adat (customary law).
The cow-buffalo punishment
For ill-treatment of women, an adat punishment now little in vogue at the time of writing was formerly resorted to in Acheh: the offender was set on a cow-buffalo and led round followed by a hooting and jeering crowd. The late chief of Lho’ Kruet on the West Coast used to apply this punishment to all sorts of other offences, “not excluding dina” — that is, the offence of illicit intercourse properly so called, the same word being applied in Achehnese to its consequences.
By extending a punishment originally reserved for ill-treatment of women to a much wider range of offences, including dina itself, the chief of Lho’ Kruet exemplifies the latitude that Achehnese chiefs enjoyed in devising and inflicting penalties. Snouck Hurgronje notes that “there are no definite adat-rules in regard to all these punishments. They are applied at the whim of the uleebalang, not only in the case of illicit intercourse but also of other favourite sins of the Achehnese”. The decision to punish depended on whether some sacred occasion or place had been extraordinarily polluted, whether the offence had been perpetrated with outrageous shamelessness, or whether the perpetrators were persons specially obnoxious to the chiefs.
Place in Achehnese judicial custom
The cow-buffalo punishment must be set beside the more lurid repertoire of the Chief of Teunom, who is reported to have caused adulterous lovers to be deprived of their virility by the objects of their passion, and to have punished many transgressors of the law as to fasts by having them led about the country on all fours for some days with rings in their noses like buffaloes, and forcing them to eat grass. Together, the two West-Coast chiefs illustrate Snouck Hurgronje’s general observation that the formal criminal law of the kalis’ courts was everywhere supplemented — and indeed overshadowed — by the arbitrary and theatrical justice of the uleebalangs.
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.
The late Chief of Lho’ Kruet (also written Lho’-Kruet) was a West-Coast chief of Acheh whose name is preserved in Snouck Hurgronje’s account principally through a singularly distinctive form of punishment that he is said to have applied. He is one of the Achehnese uleebalangs cited by way of illustration of the way in which arbitrary punishments — “often elaborated and inflicted by the chiefs” — were devised in Acheh and its dependencies, as in other Mohammedan countries, outside the formal framework of either the hukom (religious law) or the adat (customary law).
The cow-buffalo punishment
For ill-treatment of women, an adat punishment now little in vogue at the time of writing was formerly resorted to in Acheh: the offender was set on a cow-buffalo and led round followed by a hooting and jeering crowd. The late chief of Lho’ Kruet on the West Coast used to apply this punishment to all sorts of other offences, “not excluding dina” — that is, the offence of illicit intercourse properly so called, the same word being applied in Achehnese to its consequences.
By extending a punishment originally reserved for ill-treatment of women to a much wider range of offences, including dina itself, the chief of Lho’ Kruet exemplifies the latitude that Achehnese chiefs enjoyed in devising and inflicting penalties. Snouck Hurgronje notes that “there are no definite adat-rules in regard to all these punishments. They are applied at the whim of the uleebalang, not only in the case of illicit intercourse but also of other favourite sins of the Achehnese”. The decision to punish depended on whether some sacred occasion or place had been extraordinarily polluted, whether the offence had been perpetrated with outrageous shamelessness, or whether the perpetrators were persons specially obnoxious to the chiefs.
Place in Achehnese judicial custom
The cow-buffalo punishment must be set beside the more lurid repertoire of the Chief of Teunom, who is reported to have caused adulterous lovers to be deprived of their virility by the objects of their passion, and to have punished many transgressors of the law as to fasts by having them led about the country on all fours for some days with rings in their noses like buffaloes, and forcing them to eat grass. Together, the two West-Coast chiefs illustrate Snouck Hurgronje’s general observation that the formal criminal law of the kalis’ courts was everywhere supplemented — and indeed overshadowed — by the arbitrary and theatrical justice of the uleebalangs.
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.