Dr. A. B. Cohen Stuart was a Dutch orientalist and colonial scholar whose writings on the Javanese and Malay calendars were used as standard reference works by the Netherlands-India administration in the middle of the nineteenth century. He is cited by Snouck Hurgronje in The Achehnese in the chapter on the Achehno-Mohammedan divisions of time, where his remarks on the eight-year cycle of the Javanese calendar are invoked to throw light on the closely related Achehnese system.
Cohen Stuart’s principal contributions to the subject appeared in two complementary publications of the colonial government: the Government Almanac for 1868 (where his remarks occupy pages 12 et seq., and a separate notice on the rūya or moon-sighting appears at p. 15), and the Tijdschrift van het Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen, Vol. XX (p. 198, and again p. 209). These two articles together describe the eight-year cycle of the Javanese, the system of year-letters, and the variant Malay and Sumatran almanacs then in use, with particular attention to the way in which the Javanese rūya — and its acceptance in the colonial capital — long preceded the universal adoption of the same method among the Malays of the Straits Settlements.
Snouck draws on Cohen Stuart’s account of the Javanese cycle in order to show that the Achehnese calendar has “this in common” with the Javanese, “that its year alip if divided by 8 leaves a remainder of 3”. The year-letters, however, are different; the Achehnese correspond with those which are to be found in some Arabic handbooks, “which T. J. Newbold cursorily refers to as in use among the Malays (British Settlements in the Straits of Malacca, II p. 336), and which Dr. Cohen Stuart met with in a Sumatran almanac”. The comparison thus traced through Cohen Stuart’s material — Arabic, Javanese, Sumatran, Malay and Achehnese — exemplifies the way in which calendar lore was transmitted across the Indian Archipelago through the medium of pilgrims and traders from the Straits and Arabia.
Though a minor figure compared with the great colonial orientalists, Cohen Stuart’s careful descriptions of the Javanese astronomical and calendrical systems were, for Snouck, an indispensable point of comparison for the related but distinct usages of Acheh. His name remains attached to one of the classic accounts of the eight-year cycle on which the dating of Mohammedan festivals was, and to some extent still is, computed in the archipelago.
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.
Dr. A. B. Cohen Stuart was a Dutch orientalist and colonial scholar whose writings on the Javanese and Malay calendars were used as standard reference works by the Netherlands-India administration in the middle of the nineteenth century. He is cited by Snouck Hurgronje in The Achehnese in the chapter on the Achehno-Mohammedan divisions of time, where his remarks on the eight-year cycle of the Javanese calendar are invoked to throw light on the closely related Achehnese system.
Cohen Stuart’s principal contributions to the subject appeared in two complementary publications of the colonial government: the Government Almanac for 1868 (where his remarks occupy pages 12 et seq., and a separate notice on the rūya or moon-sighting appears at p. 15), and the Tijdschrift van het Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen, Vol. XX (p. 198, and again p. 209). These two articles together describe the eight-year cycle of the Javanese, the system of year-letters, and the variant Malay and Sumatran almanacs then in use, with particular attention to the way in which the Javanese rūya — and its acceptance in the colonial capital — long preceded the universal adoption of the same method among the Malays of the Straits Settlements.
Snouck draws on Cohen Stuart’s account of the Javanese cycle in order to show that the Achehnese calendar has “this in common” with the Javanese, “that its year alip if divided by 8 leaves a remainder of 3”. The year-letters, however, are different; the Achehnese correspond with those which are to be found in some Arabic handbooks, “which T. J. Newbold cursorily refers to as in use among the Malays (British Settlements in the Straits of Malacca, II p. 336), and which Dr. Cohen Stuart met with in a Sumatran almanac”. The comparison thus traced through Cohen Stuart’s material — Arabic, Javanese, Sumatran, Malay and Achehnese — exemplifies the way in which calendar lore was transmitted across the Indian Archipelago through the medium of pilgrims and traders from the Straits and Arabia.
Though a minor figure compared with the great colonial orientalists, Cohen Stuart’s careful descriptions of the Javanese astronomical and calendrical systems were, for Snouck, an indispensable point of comparison for the related but distinct usages of Acheh. His name remains attached to one of the classic accounts of the eight-year cycle on which the dating of Mohammedan festivals was, and to some extent still is, computed in the archipelago.
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.