Pagaraye (in the OCR of The Achehnese rendered Pagaraye) is a mukim of the XXV Mukims of Acheh, situated close to the capital and repeatedly noticed by Snouck Hurgronje as one of the small group of mukims whose independence of the panglima sagi preserved a relic of an earlier political arrangement of the sultanate.
Pagaraye is listed, together with the mukims of Lueng Bata and Lam Sayun, as one of three mukims which “are regarded as properly belonging to the [XXV] Mukims, yet this trio seems also to have been formerly wakeueh.” A wakeueh district was one over which the sultan himself exercised immediate control, in contrast to the territories entrusted to the panglima sagi or to other uleebalangs. “Within the memory of man, however, the only trace of such a status has been the independence of the chiefs of these mukims.” The influential and powerful imeum of Lueng Bata was indeed on many occasions the adviser and ally of the sultan; “but this very relation made it necessary for the latter to hold this chief in great respect and treat him with marked distinction.” Snouck Hurgronje concludes that “we must thus regard these wakeueh-districts of 3 mukims as being merely the relics of earlier conditions; the period during which they served to advance the political aims of the sultans was in any case of very short duration.”
Pagaraye also figures in Vol. I as the seat of the tomb of the dreaded Burong Srabi (also called Burong Seurabi or Srabi Tanjong), the most feared of all the burongs — female spirits that prey upon pregnant women and women in childbed. “Her tomb is situated in gampong Tanjong (mukim of Pagaraye) close to the capital of Acheh”, and is reverently visited by mothers who have vowed to “fulfil their vow at the tomb of their grandmother” — the euphemistic formula by which the ill-omened burong is politely addressed. The cult of Burong Srabi thus gives Pagaraye a place in the popular superstition of the lowlands; the mukim’s proximity to the capital made its village of Tanjong a convenient object of pilgrimage for mothers throughout the surrounding country.
Beyond these two notices — the one political, the other folk-religious — Pagaraye is not described in detail in Vol. I. Its importance lay in its double character as a surviving wakeueh mukim and as the seat of one of the principal saints’ tombs of the lowlands; in both capacities it represented an order of things older than the dominant adat of the Three Sagis.
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.