THE ACHEHNESE - Acehbooks.org

12
opinion the fulfilment of this law was indispensable, although in practice
fruitless for the majority of those who arc in name believers, since
they have not grasped the deep mystic significance of the ritual obser­
vances and of the law in general.
Others however go much further and assert that this complete con­
sciousness of the universal unity is a universal sembahyang or prayer,
which does away with the necessity for the five daily devotional exer­
cises of ordinary men. Nay they sometimes go so far as to brand as
a servant of many gods one who continues to offer up his sembahyang
or to testify that there is no God but Allah, since he that truly com­
prehends the Unity knows that "there is no receiver of prayer and no
offerer thereof;" for the One cannot pray to or worship itself. The
Javanese put such philosophy in the mouths of their greatest saints,
and among the Malays and Achehnese also, teachers who proclaimed
such views have been universally revered since early times.
Mysticism From the chronicles of Acheh, portions of which have been published
the 16* and ky Dr. Niemann, ') we learn somewhat of the religio-philosophical life
17'i'centu- j n Acheh in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. We see there that
nes.
the religious pandits who held mastery in the country were not Acheh­
nese, but either Syrians or Egyptians who came to Acheh from Mekka,
or else natives of India, such as Ranlii 2 ) from Gujerat. We also notice
i) Bloemlczing uit Maleische gtschriften, 2nd edition, pp. 'P.— It .
2) I cannot discover whether the Muhammad JailanI 1). Hasan b. Muhammed Ilamid
Raniri of the chronicles is actually identical with the man known as Nuruddln b. AH. b.
Hasanji b. Muhammad Raniri, or a younger relative of his. The latter name is mentioned
in Dr. van der Tuuk's essay on the Malay mss. of the Royal Asiatic Society (see Essays
relating to Indo-China, 2e series, Vol II, p. 44—45 and 49—52). The man of whom
Niemann speaks came to Acheh for the second time in 1588 and settled the disputed
questions of the day in regard to mysticism; the Raniri of Van der Tuuk resisted the
mystic teaching of Shamsuddln of Sumatra (Pasei), who accoi'ding to the chronicles edited
by Niemann died in 1630, and wrote the most celebrated of his works shortly before and
during the reign of Queen Safiatodin Shah (1641—75). This would render the identity of
the two very improbable, but the chronicler may have made an error in the date. The
omission of the name AH in the chronicle is in itself no difficulty, and the names Muhammad
JailanI and Nuruddln may quite well have belonged to one and the same person; nay, in
a Batavian ins. (see Van den Berg's Verslag p. I, no. 3 and 9, no. 491:.) Nuruddln ar Raniri
is actually also called Muhammad JailanI. In the margin of an edition of the Taj-ul-mulk
(see § 5 below) which appeared at Mekka in A. II. 1311, is printed a treatise bearing the
title Bad'' chain as-samazval mal-ardh. The author of this treatise is called Nuruddln bin
AH Hasanji, and in the Arabic introduction it is told of him that he came to Acheh in
November 1637, and received from Sultan Iskandar Thani the command to write this book
in March 1638. The dates given, however, in the Malay translation which immediately
follows the Arabic introduction, are quite different from the above!