Kosmologi AcehAcehnese Cosmology

Acehnese Cosmology is the discipline that studies how Acehnese society understands the universe, both the great world (macrocosm) and the small world within the human being (microcosm): its origin, structure and order, and the human place within it from creation to the life after death. It belongs to the framework of Aceh studies because every body of knowledge a community produces rests on its cosmology; philosophy, religion, law and moral order cannot be grasped without first understanding how a society sees nature and the forces that bind it. Its materials range from scholars' accounts of creation, such as the writings of Nuruddin ar-Raniri and the poetry of Hamzah Fansuri, to the placement of kingdoms, religious schools (dayah), villages and tombs in the landscape, and to everyday vocabulary that names God as owner and giver of all things. Islam is seen as the binding force of this system: were Islam removed from the Acehnese frame of thought, its cosmology would be uprooted with it. Core questions include how Acehnese scholars narrated the origin and structure of the cosmos; how cosmic ideas were translated into custom (adat), usage (reusam) and religious law (hukom); which standards of morality and conduct follow from them; how the unseen world and inner knowledge are understood; and why this knowledge is ever less often taught to the young, dismissed as myth or as irrational.