The Deccan — the great plateau of southern India — is mentioned throughout The Achehnese as the country from which the creed of Islam is believed to have been first introduced into the East Indian Archipelago, and as the principal comparative region for the popular religious customs of the Achehnese. Snouck Hurgronje bases much of his account of the Deccan on the Qanoon-e-islam of Jaffur Shurreef (pronounced janur Shurīf), translated into English by G. A. Herklots (2nd ed., Madras, 1863, pp. 98–149).
The source of Achehnese Islam
The choice of the eighth month of the Mohammedan year for the commemoration of the dead — the kanduri bu (Sha’bān) of Acheh — is treated by Snouck as “a further corroboration of the introduction of Islam into Acheh from the Deccan,” since in Arabia the commemoration generally takes place in the seventh month. The special sanctity of the “night of the middle of Sha’bān,” called in Acheh malam beureu’at and in the Deccan Shab-i-barat, is believed in by all Mohammedans: it is supposed that on that particular night Allah determines the fate of mortals during the forthcoming year. The Achehnese name of the month Bulèë kanduri is borrowed from the pious custom of holding a religious feast on some one day of Sha’bān.
The Mohammedans of the Deccan, whose manners are portrayed in Jaffur Shurreef’s book, are Shafi’ites — just like those of the Malayan Archipelago — but their national ideas and customs have arisen to a great extent under strong Shi’ite influences. These “adventitious additions to their creed were adopted by the Malay and other inhabitants of the Eastern Archipelago along with the creed itself.” The Deccan form of Mohammedanism, Snouck concludes, “exercised an influence on that of the Indonesians superior in force to that of any other agency.” This may at once be gathered from the character of the popular religious literature of the Archipelago.
The Hasan-Husain feast and Ashura
The Hasan-Husain feasts — the mad processions, the cries of Husain! Husain!, the violence done to the actor who takes the part of the murderer of Husain — are particularly common in Hindustan and remind one more of a fair or carnival than of a funeral pageant. Such observances “specially belong to Persia and the Shi’ite portions of British India, and need not occupy our attention here”; yet it is worthy of remark that even Mohammedan peoples who follow the orthodox ritual, but whose life and thought have been subjected to Shi’ite influences, celebrate feasts of the above description. The Hasan-Husain feast is celebrated to this day in Trumon in the manner customary in the Deccan, a fact which Snouck regards as evidence of the lasting influence of Deccani Islam in some at least of the parts of the Archipelago.
The cooking of special viands on the Ashura day is found in every part of the Mohammedan world, but the dish varies: in the Deccan it is the khichri of Hindustan; in Cairo it is called hubub (“seeds” or “grains”); in Java the bubur sura consists of various grains or seeds. The “lances” — the poles carried about in the Hasan-Husain processions, ornamented with various figures and with the head of a horse or gazelle at the top — are often explained as commemorative of the standard of Husain’s horse; but it is possible that there “lurks here a further allusion to the dances of the Hasan-Husain feasters round fires, as practised to this day in Trumon and the neighbourhood of Singkel.”
Customs shared with the Deccan
The Qanoon-e-islam is repeatedly cited by Snouck for the details of Deccani Mohammedan practice. The popular superstitions of the Deccan regarding pregnancy, childbed and the new-born child, the methods of exorcism, the tahlils recited on behalf of the dead, the observances of the eighth month — all are set beside the corresponding Achehnese practices, and are found to be either identical or to differ only in details. The same custom by which the husband, immediately after the marriage ceremony, declares his liability to divorce on specified grounds — the so-called predeclared ta’liq — is, Snouck suggests, “in all probability met with in those parts of Hindustan whence Islam was introduced into the E. Indian 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.