Rabò is a small islet near Poelo Breuëh (also called Poelau Bras) off the north-western coast of Groot-Atjeh in Atjeh, on which the inhabitants of the VI Moekim’s of Groot-Atjeh held, in the period documented by Snouck Hurgronje (Snouck Hurgronje’s De Atjehers ([[1893-94)|De Atjehers]], vol. II, p. 315), an annual seven-day feast on the beach — the Rabò annual seven-day feast — the seventh day of which culminated in the ritual sacrifice of a buffalo that was first stabbed in some body part and then led bleeding over all the rice-fields “so that none of them should miss the disaster-averting sprinkling with its blood,” before being ritually slaughtered and consumed. The islet is named in Kreemer’s *De Karbouw* ([[1956)]] (p. 246) as the type-locality of this Atjehnese ritual.
In De Karbouw
The Rabò passage in De Karbouw (p. 246) — the only passage in the book that names the islet — reads in full:
“Op het nabij Poelo Breuëh (Poelau Bras) gelegen eilandje Rabò in Groot-Atjeh plegen de bewoners der VI Moekim’s elk jaar aan het strand een zevendaags feest te geven. De zevende dag van deze „kermis der losbandigheid” offert men een buffel, die eerst in een of ander lichaamsdeel gestoken en dan bloedend over alle rijstvelden wordt heengeleid ‘opdat geen daarvan de onheilwerende besproeiing met zijn bloed misse.’ Daarna slacht men het dier op rituele wijze en nuttigt zijn vlees. Het verzuim hiervan zou een jaar van misgewas tengevolg hebben.” The passage fixes Rabò as the site of an institution — the annual seven-day beach feast of the VI Moekim’s of Groot-Atjeh — that combined carnival (the “kermis der losbandigheid,” or carnival of debauchery, lasting seven days) with a culminating ritual of bebloeding (the leading of a stabbed, bleeding buffalo over all the rice-fields so that none should miss the apotropaic sprinkling of its blood), followed by the ritual slaughter and communal consumption of the animal. The sanction for neglect is explicitly agricultural: a year of crop failure (misgewas).
Ritual significance
The Rabò sacrifice is the most fully documented Atjeh-specific instance of the wider archipelagic pattern of bebloeding — the magical sprinkling of buffalo blood on rice-fields, houses, tools, etc. to neutralise evil influences and restore fertility — and is set by De Karbouw in comparative relation to cognate practices among the Toradja, the Dayak, the Ngadaneses of Flores, and other Indonesian peoples. What distinguishes the Rabò case is the scale of the rite (a seven-day carnival with the buffalo-sacrifice at its climax), the territorial frame (the rice-fields of the VI Moekim’s, collectively traversed by the bleeding buffalo), and the explicitness of the agricultural sanction (a year of misgewas on neglect). The Rabò rite also exemplifies the wider Atjehnese pattern, recorded elsewhere in De Karbouw, in which buffalo-sacrifice is integrated with the calendar of rice-cultivation — a pattern visible also in the *poephon blang* field-consecration rite of Groot-Atjeh.
Significance
Rabò’s significance for the encyclopedia of Acheh history is as the type-locality of the Rabò annual seven-day feast — the most fully documented Atjeh-specific instance of the bebloeding of rice-fields by means of a stabbed and bleeding buffalo, performed by the inhabitants of the VI Moekim’s of Groot-Atjeh as the climactic ritual of a seven-day carnival on the beach. The rite is one of the principal Atjeh-specific buffalo-rituals documented in De Karbouw, and is significant both as an instance of the integration of buffalo-sacrifice with the calendar of rice-cultivation and as a documented case of the magical-agricultural function of the buffalo in Atjehnese village life.
Sources
De Karbouw — Zijn betekenis voor de volken van de Indonesische Archipel, by J. Kreemer (‘s-Gravenhage / Bandung: N.V. Uitgeverij W. van Hoeve, 1956), p. 246.
De Atjehers, by C. Snouck Hurgronje, 2 vols. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1893-94), vol. II, p. 315.