Pegasing is a valley in the onderafdeeling Takengon of the Gouvernement Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden — the highland Gayo country of central Atjeh — and one of the two principal centres of irrigated sawah cultivation in the Takengon onderafdeeling, the other being the plain west of the Tawar-meer (Lake Laut Tawar). Pegasing is documented by J. Kreemer in his *De rijstcultuur in het gewest Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden* (1918) as one of the localities in which the rice cultivation of Takengon is carried on by means of levend water (living water) — that is, by irrigation from running streams rather than from rain or from swamp.
The Rice Cultivation of Takengon
The onderafdeeling Takengon of the Gouvernement Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden is the highland Gayo country of central Atjeh, situated around the Tawar-meer (Lake Laut Tawar) at an altitude of about 1,200 metres. Kreemer records that in Takengon “men vindt slechts velden, die door levend water worden geïrrigeerd, en wel voornamelijk in de vlakte ten Westen van het Tawar-meer en in de Pegasing-vallei” — one finds only fields that are irrigated by living water, and principally in the plain west of the Tawar-meer and in the Pegasing valley.
The rice cultivation of Takengon is thus wholly irrigated — there are no rain-dependent sawahs and no swamp-sawahs in the onderafdeeling. The irrigation water is taken from the streams that flow into the Tawar-meer or into its outflow, and is led through dug channels to the sawahs of the plain west of the lake and of the Pegasing valley.
Significance
Pegasing is significant for the encyclopedia of Aceh history as one of the two principal centres of irrigated sawah cultivation in the highland Gayo country of central Atjeh. The Pegasing valley, together with the plain west of the Tawar-meer, is the principal rice-producing area of the Takengon onderafdeeling, and its irrigated sawahs are the technical exemplification of the Gayo highland rice-economy — an economy of irrigated cultivation in a highland valley, distinct from the rain-dependent sawah cultivation of Groot-Atjeh or the swamp-sawah cultivation of the Westkust lowlands.
See Also
- Rijstbouw in Atjeh
- Sawah
- Kreemer’s De rijstcultuur in het gewest Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden (1918)
- J. Kreemer
- Takengon
- Laut Tawar
- Gajoland
- Groot-Atjeh
- Panté Tjeureumèn
Source
De rijstcultuur in het gewest Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden, by J. Kreemer (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1918), p. 20 (the rice cultivation of the Takengon onderafdeeling, mentioning the Pegasing valley).