Keris or not?
 

Seems lost many elements in upper area.

Yes.

Cengkrong luk lima.

So Alan, this is normal for this type of keris? No ganga I noticed. :confused:

Yes, form is correct, but sometimes they will have a gonjo, sometimes the gonjo might be iras, ie, just marked on the blade, not fitted separately.

The ones with no gonjo have sometimes had a gonjo fitted & it has been lost, other times they appear to have never had a gonjo.

they seem to exist with and without a Ganja.
The dress and hilt are Madurese and I think that, once cleaned and stained, the blade may, possibly, show as being pamor adeg rambut

Thank you for your knowledge!

Hello, my learned friends， is this one of the same type?

In my opinion, though not as experienced as others, the kris you show is South Sumatran Kris .
I have never seen that particular dhapur featured here (but others with more experience may be familiar with them)

The " ganja" appears to be not really separated from the blade with a " symbolic" separation

To answer your question Hugh, i would say no, this last keris you show is not Cengkrong. It clearly has a gandik (Cengkrong do not) and the keris is gonjo iras, meaning that the blade is all one piece without a separate gonjo, though it does have an incised line to mark out a gonjo area.

I look at this and can't help but wonder if it started life as ganjo iras or is this its second incarnation?

Yes, it started it's life as gonjo iras! :)

You should be more specific about which keris you are referring to.

Hello, Alan ,can you illustrate to us what is Cengkrong luk lima?

The waves in the blade of a keris are called "luk".

"Lima" is the number 5.

"Luk Lima" is "five wave".

The present method of wave count is to begin on the first wave above the gandhik and the first wave on the other side of the blade is wave 2.

We continue towards the point and finish the count on the same side of the blade that we began on, often there is no wave at that point, it is often a nominal wave only.

The number of waves is always uneven, except in extremely rare cases.

Why does five wave keris sometimes doesn't need gonjo?

I don't think it is a prerogative of a 5 luk kris being Ganja Iras. Any kris straight or with luk may or may not be created without a Ganja.

here there is a thread with some info on this

http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showth...ght=Gonjo+Iras

Thank you Milandro, it seems that no conclusion has been made about why gonjo iras exists.

Perhaps no general conclusion, but my own conclusion is very simple:- money.

Smiths work for a living.

The cheaper one makes something, the cheaper one can sell it, the more sales that can be made.

There is a real lot of very careful, demanding work in making a gonjo and achieving a satisfactory fit.

There is much less work in punching a straight line.

Less time, less work, less fuel.

Alan, Why the gonjo of keris is asymmetrical，and why keris as a double-edged sword is asymmetrical? Most swords have something like a GonJo like Tsuba. But they are symmetrical even in curved single-edged swords or knifes.

perhaps here you find some of the answers to your questions

http://www.vikingsword.com/ethsword/maisey/


the shape of the kris contains both symbolic and practical elements

That "Origin" paper is pretty old, the core of it, I think I can still support, but it really needs to be rechurned.

Hugh, the simple answer to your question is that I do not know why most keris are asymmetrical. We can hypothesise, but perhaps that's the best we can do. I think its probably a "form follows function" thing, given the original form of the archaic keris, & the way it was used. But we really have no certainty.