Lam Teuba is a locality in Acheh associated in the ethnographic record of The Achehnese with the manufacture of poisonous charms drawn from a species of toadstool (kulat). The poison-makers (ureueng meukulat) of Lam Teuba were regarded as the best in the country, and their reputation placed the village at the centre of one of the darker branches of Achehnese popular magic.
The Kulat and Its Practitioners
Snouck Hurgronje, in his chapter on Achehnese magic, describes how certain sorts of toadstool — kulat — were very much dreaded by the Achehnese. The preparation of these for malicious uses formed a special branch of mystic craft, and the scoundrels who practised the art were called ureueng meukulat. The most powerful kulat of this description was known as kulat Lam Teuha, from the name of the locality where it was to be found in the greatest abundance; while the poison-makers of Lam Teuba were “also regarded as the best.” Much skill was required to seek out the right kinds, to “charm” (rajah) them in the desired sense, and to work the charm when prepared. Thus, to cause an enemy a wound on the leg, the practitioner transfixed a toadstool with a needle and then secretly mixed a portion of it with his food.
The Logic of Sympathetic Magic
Other manipulations of the kulat were employed to engender passion for a lover, hatred against a spouse, madness, or even death. As with all Achehnese magical practice, the virtue of the preparation lay not so much in the physical properties of the substance as in the incantations pronounced over it. A poison owed its activity chiefly to the magic incantations pronounced over it, or to the witchcraft required for its preparation; and its force might in like manner be broken by an expert with the aid of certain definite prayers (tangkay). As an antidote to the ills resulting from kulat, there was no better remedy than kulat itself — but it was a remedy most difficult to procure.
Lam Teuba in Achehnese Popular Geography
The reputation of Lam Teuba thus placed the village alongside kulat Lam Teuha as a recognised source of dangerous magical expertise. Such local specialisations were characteristic of the Achehnese countryside, in which individual gampongs were habitually identified with particular crafts, charms, or forms of knowledge — from the cloth of Lam Gugob to the epidemic-averting lanchang launched from the kuala of the Aceh river. Snouck Hurgronje’s notice of Lam Teuba is brief, but it suffices to show that the village enjoyed, in the late nineteenth century, a sinister pre-eminence in the arts of sympathetic poisoning.
Lam-Teuba in the eye survey of 1937
In Dr. C. E. Gomperts’s eye survey of 1937, Lam-Teuba appears as one of only two moekims of Groot-Atjeh possessing irrigation from mountain streams, and consequently as the strongest test of the theory that xerophthalmie was simply a disease of food shortage.
Irrigation and the double harvest
Since there was no artificial irrigation of the sawah fields in Groot-Atjeh and cultivators depended on rainfall, the long drought of 1936 and 1937 caused the paddi planting to fail — “met uitzondering van den aanplant in VI Moekims Lhong en Moekim Lam-Teuba, alwaar de sawahbevloeiing plaats vindt door middel van bergstroomen die ook in de droge tijden voldoende water leveren.” In Lam-Teuba the planting and harvest took place twice a year; in the rest of Groot-Atjeh only once. The moekim accordingly had “ruim voldoende voedsel (rijst) voor de bevolking.”
The test of the dietary theory
Gomperts found that the percentage of xerophthalmia cases in Lam-Teuba was “vrijwel gelijk” to that in the valley moekims Indrapoeri, Seulimeum and Lam-Kabeuë, where the rice harvest had been less favourable — one of three comparisons on which he rested his conclusion that nutrition alone could not solve the xerophthalmia question.
Against Tijssen’s contrary proposition that xerophthalmia occurred especially “in rijk voedselgebied, rijstovervloed in Atjeh,” Gomperts set the Lam-Teuba figures directly: 4 cases among 290 children examined, or 1½ per cent.
See Also
- Acheh
- Lam Gugob
- Kuala (of the Aceh River)
- Great Acheh
- Oriënteerend oogheelkundig onderzoek bij de Atjehsche bevolking van Groot-Atjeh gedurende 1937
- C. E. Gomperts
- Xerophthalmie
- VI Moekims Lhong
- Lam-Kabeuë
- Sawah
- Oogheelkundig kampongonderzoek in Groot-Atjeh (Maart-December 1937)
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.
Oriënteerend oogheelkundig onderzoek bij de Atjehsche bevolking van Groot-Atjeh gedurende 1937 (“Orienting Ophthalmological Survey among the Atjehnese Population of Groot-Atjeh during 1937”), by Dr. C. E. Gomperts, offprint from the Geneeskundig Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch-Indië, Afl. 19, Deel 80 (1940), pp. 1191-1238 (Batavia-Centrum: G. Kolff & Co.). Received by the editors 25 October 1939. Offprint DLP-157, Bibliotheek KITLV.