G. A. Wilken was a Dutch ethnographer of the Indonesian Archipelago, whose article “Struma en Cretinisme in den Indischen Archipel” (“Goitre and Cretinism in the Indian Archipelago”), published in the Bijdragen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch Indië for 1890 (p. 420), is cited by Snouck Hurgronje in The Achehnese in connection with the Achehnese beliefs about goitre.
Citation in The Achehnese
Wilken is cited in a footnote appended to Snouck Hurgronje’s account of the Achehnese leumbe — the spirits that haunt the climbing lianes of the jungle, and in particular the water of the mountain streams on which they exert their spell. Most of those who drink such water, the Achehnese believe, get goitre (cheugbug). This disease is very common in some parts of Pidie, especially in the neighbourhood of Keumala; and also in part of the highlands of the auriferous district of Woyla on the West Coast. Most of the sufferers are women. The malady is ascribed, “with absolute conviction” by the Achehnese, to the drinking of the water of certain definite streamlets in those districts, and it is the influence of the leumbe which is believed to render their waters so dangerous. Some cases of goitre, Snouck Hurgronje adds, are referred by the Achehnese to another cause, namely sucking the fresh puntong-fruit off the kernel (jijue) instead of removing it piecemeal with the hand.
The footnote to this passage refers the reader to Wilken: “Cf. Wilken’s Struma en Cretinisme in den Indischen Archipel, in the Bijdragen van het Koninklijk Inst. v. d. Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië for the year 1890, p. 420”.
Significance for the comparative study of Achehnese belief
The citation of Wilken places the Achehnese account of goitre within the wider comparative context of the disease’s distribution and aetiology throughout the Archipelago. The Achehnese attribution of the disease to the leumbe-haunted streamlets is, in Wilken’s perspective, a local aetiological myth attached to a real endemic condition; the parallel Malay belief recorded in the same footnote — that the remedy for the disease is tarum (indigo) — is similarly a local popular treatment of the same condition. Wilken’s article thus enables Snouck Hurgronje to bring out both the empirical basis of the Achehnese belief (goitre is in fact endemic in the districts named) and the mythological form in which the Achehnese have cast their explanation of it.
Place in the comparative apparatus
Wilken is one of a small group of Dutch ethnographers — alongside G. H. Niemann, G. K. Niemann, and Dr. Brandes — whose articles in the Bijdragen form the comparative scaffolding of The Achehnese. The same method governs Snouck Hurgronje’s citation of Skeat’s Malay Magic for the parallel Malay beliefs, and of Lane’s Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians for the parallel Egyptian usages. In each case, the customs of Acheh are at once local in their immediate form and widely diffused in their underlying pattern.
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.
G. A. Wilken was a Dutch ethnographer of the Indonesian Archipelago, whose article “Struma en Cretinisme in den Indischen Archipel” (“Goitre and Cretinism in the Indian Archipelago”), published in the Bijdragen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch Indië for 1890 (p. 420), is cited by Snouck Hurgronje in The Achehnese in connection with the Achehnese beliefs about goitre.
Citation in The Achehnese
Wilken is cited in a footnote appended to Snouck Hurgronje’s account of the Achehnese leumbe — the spirits that haunt the climbing lianes of the jungle, and in particular the water of the mountain streams on which they exert their spell. Most of those who drink such water, the Achehnese believe, get goitre (cheugbug). This disease is very common in some parts of Pidie, especially in the neighbourhood of Keumala; and also in part of the highlands of the auriferous district of Woyla on the West Coast. Most of the sufferers are women. The malady is ascribed, “with absolute conviction” by the Achehnese, to the drinking of the water of certain definite streamlets in those districts, and it is the influence of the leumbe which is believed to render their waters so dangerous. Some cases of goitre, Snouck Hurgronje adds, are referred by the Achehnese to another cause, namely sucking the fresh puntong-fruit off the kernel (jijue) instead of removing it piecemeal with the hand.
The footnote to this passage refers the reader to Wilken: “Cf. Wilken’s Struma en Cretinisme in den Indischen Archipel, in the Bijdragen van het Koninklijk Inst. v. d. Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië for the year 1890, p. 420”.
Significance for the comparative study of Achehnese belief
The citation of Wilken places the Achehnese account of goitre within the wider comparative context of the disease’s distribution and aetiology throughout the Archipelago. The Achehnese attribution of the disease to the leumbe-haunted streamlets is, in Wilken’s perspective, a local aetiological myth attached to a real endemic condition; the parallel Malay belief recorded in the same footnote — that the remedy for the disease is tarum (indigo) — is similarly a local popular treatment of the same condition. Wilken’s article thus enables Snouck Hurgronje to bring out both the empirical basis of the Achehnese belief (goitre is in fact endemic in the districts named) and the mythological form in which the Achehnese have cast their explanation of it.
Place in the comparative apparatus
Wilken is one of a small group of Dutch ethnographers — alongside G. H. Niemann, G. K. Niemann, and Dr. Brandes — whose articles in the Bijdragen form the comparative scaffolding of The Achehnese. The same method governs Snouck Hurgronje’s citation of Skeat’s Malay Magic for the parallel Malay beliefs, and of Lane’s Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians for the parallel Egyptian usages. In each case, the customs of Acheh are at once local in their immediate form and widely diffused in their underlying pattern.
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.