Leube Peureuba — also called Hatib Peureuba (the khaṭīb or Friday preacher) — is the central male figure of the Achehnese legend of the origin of the burong, the dreaded female vampire-spirit that preys upon pregnant women and women in childbed. He is one of the principal sinners of Achehnese popular mythology, and his name is invoked in the tangkay burong — the charms and exorcisms by which the burong is warded off — as the very type of ritual impurity.
The legend of Leube Peureuba is given in full by Snouck Hurgronje in the chapter on spirits and spectres. “One Leube Peureuba, who in his lifetime was a hatib or Friday preacher in a mosque, played a principal part in connection” with the origin of the burong. “This man had an intrigue with a certain woman, and his passion for her was so great that one Friday he was still dallying with her when the time for the weekly service arrived. He betook himself in all haste to the mosque, and omitted the bath of purification which is indispensable after sexual intercourse for the efficacy of a galat or prayer. He also forgot to return to his mistress her earrings, which for a jest he had hidden on the bara or main beam of the house”.
When he had mounted the pulpit and commenced the service in the customary manner, leaning on his great staff, his paramour entered the mosque and enquired of him “where are my earrings?” In reply he recited the Arabic words from the service barra ‘rrauf arrahwi, indicating the bara as the place where the earrings were hidden. The woman asked him other questions, all of which he answered by fragments of the Arabic service whose sound recalled Achehnese words — a series of bilingual puns that Snouck carefully records. “This unholy by-play ended in the hatib Peureuba suddenly falling from the pulpit and being killed by the iron point of his own preacher’s staff”.
His death became the moment of origin for the race of burongs. “According to one view he now became the burong, parent of all subsequent burongs, some of whom were derived from deceased women of loose morals, and others from those who fell a prey to burongs during pregnancy or at child-birth. Others narrate that his mistress was killed by the congregation immediately after her lover’s fall, and that her spirit became the forerunner of the burongs”. Snouck notes that the first notion, though open to the objection that it makes the feminine burong spring from a man, finds direct support in the tangkay burong (the charms against the burong), where the latter is often thus addressed: “I know who thou art; thou art Hatib Peureuba” and “thou hast not taken thy bath of purification”.
The story is one of the most vivid illustrations in The Achehnese of the way in which Islamic materials — the Friday service, the Arabic formulae, the ritual of purification — were woven by popular imagination into a body of legend that is at once Islamic in its setting and pre-Islamic in its underlying conceptions of impurity, sexual transgression, and the unquiet dead. Leube Peureuba, the Friday preacher whose lust and carelessness brought the burong into the world, stands as the male counterpart of the seduced and murdered women — Burong Srabi, Tuan Siti and the rest — whose individual histories make up the Achehnese demonology.
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.
Leube Peureuba — also called Hatib Peureuba (the khaṭīb or Friday preacher) — is the central male figure of the Achehnese legend of the origin of the burong, the dreaded female vampire-spirit that preys upon pregnant women and women in childbed. He is one of the principal sinners of Achehnese popular mythology, and his name is invoked in the tangkay burong — the charms and exorcisms by which the burong is warded off — as the very type of ritual impurity.
The legend of Leube Peureuba is given in full by Snouck Hurgronje in the chapter on spirits and spectres. “One Leube Peureuba, who in his lifetime was a hatib or Friday preacher in a mosque, played a principal part in connection” with the origin of the burong. “This man had an intrigue with a certain woman, and his passion for her was so great that one Friday he was still dallying with her when the time for the weekly service arrived. He betook himself in all haste to the mosque, and omitted the bath of purification which is indispensable after sexual intercourse for the efficacy of a galat or prayer. He also forgot to return to his mistress her earrings, which for a jest he had hidden on the bara or main beam of the house”.
When he had mounted the pulpit and commenced the service in the customary manner, leaning on his great staff, his paramour entered the mosque and enquired of him “where are my earrings?” In reply he recited the Arabic words from the service barra ‘rrauf arrahwi, indicating the bara as the place where the earrings were hidden. The woman asked him other questions, all of which he answered by fragments of the Arabic service whose sound recalled Achehnese words — a series of bilingual puns that Snouck carefully records. “This unholy by-play ended in the hatib Peureuba suddenly falling from the pulpit and being killed by the iron point of his own preacher’s staff”.
His death became the moment of origin for the race of burongs. “According to one view he now became the burong, parent of all subsequent burongs, some of whom were derived from deceased women of loose morals, and others from those who fell a prey to burongs during pregnancy or at child-birth. Others narrate that his mistress was killed by the congregation immediately after her lover’s fall, and that her spirit became the forerunner of the burongs”. Snouck notes that the first notion, though open to the objection that it makes the feminine burong spring from a man, finds direct support in the tangkay burong (the charms against the burong), where the latter is often thus addressed: “I know who thou art; thou art Hatib Peureuba” and “thou hast not taken thy bath of purification”.
The story is one of the most vivid illustrations in The Achehnese of the way in which Islamic materials — the Friday service, the Arabic formulae, the ritual of purification — were woven by popular imagination into a body of legend that is at once Islamic in its setting and pre-Islamic in its underlying conceptions of impurity, sexual transgression, and the unquiet dead. Leube Peureuba, the Friday preacher whose lust and carelessness brought the burong into the world, stands as the male counterpart of the seduced and murdered women — Burong Srabi, Tuan Siti and the rest — whose individual histories make up the Achehnese demonology.
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.