Cacah definition
Cacah by itself means merely ‘number, amount’ (R&W, 2002). In much of historical materials, especially in Dutch East India Company records, the full phrase ‘cacah gawé wong’, cacah wong (number of persons), ‘cacah somah’ (number of households), etc, has been shortened to ‘cacah.’ More to the point, cacah gawé wong and its equivalent in krama (high Javanese = karya, damel) seems to be the traditional measurement for such units. The Nagarakrtagama of the 14th century uses a variant, i.e. carcah, as a listing or register (Nag. 77:3-4, 17:11, 3; 22:2-3), there of domains belonging to an estate if a high-ranking mantri. Th. Pigeaud asserts that a secondary usage in olden times, i.e. early-modern Java of the western provinces, included able-bodied direct producers who were also members of the original village community. This fits with usage in the Cirebon-Priangan region of the late 17th-early 18th centuries,42 although whether it applies only to individuals (cacah wong, wong cilik) or to households (cacah somah) remains unclear. A number of references from that era, mainly the Dutch East India Company records, are concerned with distribution of numbers of direct producers constituting the base of power accruing to Sultans and