Indrapeurua is the locality in the VI Mukims of the XXV which gave its name to the great mosque (meuseugit raya) founded, by tradition, by Sultan Meukuta Alam (Iskandar Muda, reigned 1607–1636) as the head mosque of the XXV Mukims sagi of Great Acheh.
The foundation is described by Snouck Hurgronje in his account of the Achehnese mosque system. The erection of certain great mosques was, in the popular tradition, among the institutions ascribed to Sultan Meukuta Alam; such mosques were recognised as meuseugit raya both on account of their size and of the fact of their being erected by a sovereign prince, and also because they were regarded as the head mosques of a great number of mukims. Besides the Meuseugit Raya of the capital — the great mosque par excellence — there was one for each of the three sagis of Great Acheh: that of Indrapuri, which still existed in Snouck’s day, for the XXII Mukims; that of Indrapeurua for the XXV Mukims; and that of Indrapatra, almost in the place where Ladong now stands, for the XXVI Mukims. Of the last two, Snouck notes, “scarcely any trace remains.”
The three related toponyms — Indrapatra, Indrapuri, Indrapeurua — bear witness to a common layer of Hindu or Hindu-Buddhist nomenclature anterior to the Mohammedan settlement of the country. The first element Indra- is the name of the Vedic king of the gods, found in countless place-names of the Indianised archipelago; the second element -peurua appears to be an Achehnese phonological development of one of the Sanskrit place-name suffixes — possibly of -pura (“city”) under the influence of Achehnese vowel harmony. The occurrence of these three names together in the topography of Great Acheh is one of the principal evidences of the Hindu influence on the language and civilisation of the country, of which Snouck remarks that “it is past all doubt that Hinduism exercised for a considerable time a direct or indirect influence on the language and civilization of Acheh, though there is but little trace of such influence remaining in her present popular traditions and institutions.”
The mosque at Indrapeurua, like its sister foundations, owed its special reputation to its size and its royal founder, and its supervision was originally committed to imeums of superior rank. In the course of time, however, the office of imeum degenerated, the great mosques fell into disrepair, and at Indrapeurua, as at Indrapatra, scarcely a trace survived into the late nineteenth century. The disappearance of the building has left the name attached principally to the tradition of the Meukuta Alam foundations and to the topographical identity of the site with one of the mukims of the XXV Mukims.
Additional account from The Achehnese, Vol. I — Indrapeurua
Indrapeurua is the site of the great mosque (meuseugit raya) of the XXV Mukims of Great Acheh, mentioned by Snouck Hurgronje as one of the three sagi-mosques of the Achehnese kingdom. The mosque stood, in Snouck’s account, “in the VI Mukims of the XXV” — that is, in the lowland sagi of the XXV — and scarcely any trace of it remained at the time of his writing.
The Three Sagi-Mosques
In the chapter on the Achehnese imeum and the administration of the mosques, Snouck describes the constitution of the great mosques of Great Acheh. Such is the great mosque par excellence, the Meuseugit Raya of the capital, from which the whole district surrounding the ancient seat of royalty takes its name. “Besides this there was one for each of the three sagis of Great Acheh viz. that of Indrapuri, which still exists, for the XXII Mukims, that of Indrapeurua (in the VI Mukims of the XXV) for the XXV, and that of Indrapatra, almost in the very place where Ladong now stands, for the XXVI Mukims. Of the last two scarcely any trace remains.”
The three sagi-mosques — Indrapuri, Indrapeurua, and Indrapatra — were the head mosques of the three great territorial divisions of Great Acheh. Their erection was, by tradition, attributed to a sovereign prince, and they were regarded as the head mosques of a great number of mukims. The same chapter observes that there were also, in Pidie, a number of mosques which enjoyed the reputation of having been erected by Meukuta Alam and which were thus also called meuseugit raya; but the three sagi-mosques of Great Acheh held, in the constitution of the kingdom, a place apart.
The VI Mukims of the XXV
The site of Indrapeurua, in the VI Mukims of the XXV, places the sagi-mosque of the XXV in the lowland sagi of Great Acheh. The VI Mukims of the XXV is one of the smaller wakeueh-districts of the sagi, and the choice of the district as the seat of the sagi-mosque is consistent with the political and religious importance of the lowland in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The same district is named elsewhere by Snouck in connection with the cultivation of sugar-cane, the pula method of padi-cultivation, and the rain-making superstitions of the Achehnese coast; it is one of the most richly documented districts of the lowland sagi.
The Loss of the Sagi-Mosque
The disappearance of the mosque of Indrapeurua, like that of Indrapatra, is itself a fact of Achehnese history. The sagi-mosques were, by their nature, dependent on the patronage of the sultans and on the cohesion of the sagi; with the decline of the sultanate and the increasing independence of the uleebalangs, the great mosques fell into decay. Only Indrapuri, the sagi-mosque of the XXII, survived in any form into Snouck’s time, and its survival is in itself a mark of the relatively greater cohesion of the XXII Mukims throughout the period of the kingdom’s decline.
The Name Indra- in Achehnese Toponymy
The name Indrapeurua is one of a small class of Indra- toponyms on the Achehnese coast. The element Indra- — the name of the Hindu god of the atmosphere — is here combined with a second element (peurua or poerua) that is probably an Achehnese or Malay formation rather than a Sanskrit one, suggesting that the toponym is a hybrid: a Hindu element attached to a local place-name by way of elevating it to royal or sacred rank. Such hybrid toponyms are characteristic of the transition from the Hindu to the Mohammedan period, and they survive, in the toponymy of the mosques and the markets of Great Acheh, as evidence of the Hindu substratum of Achehnese civilisation.
See Also
- Indrapuri
- Indrapatra
- Meuseugit Raya of the capital
- XXV Mukims
- VI Mukims of the XXV
- Sultan Meukuta Alam
- Three Sagis (XXVI, XXV, XXII Mukims)
- Great Acheh
- XXII Mukims
- XXVI Mukims
- Meukuta Alam
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.