Gunong Lhee (Achehnese gunòng lhèë) is a mountain on the coast of the IV Mukims of Great Acheh mentioned in The Achehnese Vol. I as one of a class of natural objects credited with power over the weather and resorted to in the rain-making superstitions of the country.
The mountain is named in a footnote to Snouck Hurgronje’s account of the pantang (taboo) rules affecting the Achehnese sukeës or tribal confederacies. Illustrating the kind of sacred natural objects that form the centre of local vows and observances, the footnote groups together a number of parallel examples: “Ja Karieng, a dreaded tree on Pulo Lam Puyang, the subject of many vows; Gunong Lhee, a mountain on the coast of the IV Mukims which plays a part in the rain-making superstition; Krueng Blibeh, a holy well in the IX Mukims, which also helps to cause rain; and so forth.” The list is intended to convey the kind of natural objects that attract vows and observances — trees, mountains, wells, and similar features of the landscape — without entering into the detailed ritual of each.
What distinguishes Gunong Lhee in this list is its association with rain-making. The Achehnese, like other rice-growing peoples of the archipelago, were much concerned with the regularity of the rainfall, and a number of natural objects were credited with the power to bring on or to withhold the rain. The cult of such objects is essentially pre-Mohammedan in character, but — as with the pantang rules of the sukeës — it had been quietly absorbed into the popular Islam of the country and was practised without any sense of incongruity by devout Mohammedans. A mountain on the coast of the IV Mukims was thus both a geographical landmark and a focus of rain-making observance.
The name Lhèë — a common Achehnese place-name element also seen in Lam Lheue, Lheue and elsewhere — appears to be related to the Achehnese word for “three” (lhèë), but in toponymic use its precise signification is often obscure. The IV Mukims to which the mountain belongs are those of Ateue’, the chiefdom of Teuku Ateue’, an ancient house whose power was, according to tradition, much more considerable in earlier times than in the closing years of the nineteenth century.
Additional account from The Achehnese, Vol. I — Gunong Lhee
Gunong Lhee is the name by which the Achehnese know a mountain on the coast of the IV Mukims of Great Acheh, mentioned by Snouck Hurgronje in a footnote concerning the small kawoms whose memory survives in popular superstitions of rain-making and weather-omen.
The Footnote on the Smaller Kawoms
In the course of his discussion of the Achehnese kawom — the agnatic clan-grouping whose political weight had once been considerable but had by the late nineteenth century much declined — Snouck notes that the constitution or appellation of some of the smaller kawoms appears to him not improbably to have been absorbed into local superstitions. “Compare Ja Kariéng, a dreaded tree on Pulo Lam Puyang, the subject of many vows; Eumpèe Luluh, a mountain on the coast of the IV Mukims which plays a part in the rain-making superstition; Eumpèe Blieng, a holy well in the IX Mukims, which also helps to cause rain, etc.”
The Achehnese word eumpèe (“mountain” or “high hill”) is here glossed by Snouck in the same sense as the better-known gunong; the same mountain is referred to in some passages as Gunong Lhee. The combination of a high place, a wooded summit, and a coastal exposure made such hills the natural focus of weather-omens, and the rain-making superstition which attached to Gunong Lhee placed it in a class with the Pulo Lam Puyang tree, the Krueng Blibeh well of the IX Mukims, and other natural features credited with a power over the fall of rain.
The IV Mukims of the XXV
The IV Mukims on whose coast Gunong Lhee is situated is the IV Mukims of the XXV — a wakeueh-district lying in the lowland sagi of Great Acheh, the sagi of the XXV or “twenty-five mukims.” This sagi, of which the hereditary panglima was the Panglima Polem of the XXV, occupied the seaward and south-western portion of the Achehnese territory; its coast was the most exposed of any of the three sagis to the south-west monsoon, and the rain-making superstitions of the inhabitants naturally enough clustered about the most conspicuous eminence on that shore.
The Function of the Mountain in Rain-Making
The Achehnese rain-making observances — like those of the neighbouring Malay and Batak peoples — rested on the assumption that certain natural objects, by virtue of their situation or of the kramat attached to them, were able to compel or to restrain the fall of rain. The ceremony at Gunong Lhee is not described in detail by Snouck, but the parallel with the holy well of the IX Mukims and with the dreaded tree of Pulo Lam Puyang suggests that the mountain was the object of vows and small offerings, and that its summit or its slopes were visited in seasons of drought by those who desired rain. Such observances were already, in Snouck’s time, of the nature of survivals; their association with the half-forgotten names of small kawoms points to an age in which the kawom and the natural feature had been part of a single local cult.
See Also
- IV Mukims Ateue
- Ateue’
- Teuku Ateue’
- Krueng Blibeh
- Pulo Lam Puyang
- IX Mukims
- IV Mukims (of XXV)
- XXV Mukims
- Ja Karieng
- Great Acheh
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.