Balinese Hilt Help Requested
 

I am seeking information about the hilt of the Balinese blade shown below. I really like this piece (actually, keris are my favorite knives) so I hope that the pictures, coupled with the welter of my questions and observations, will lead to a positive ID. The hilt appears to be a winged creature of some sort. Is it a bat? Dragon? An akso (do they have wings)? None of the above? Does the creature's obvious erection have any significance? Does the tail give any clue to identification? Could the blade have had a religious function? It appears that the hilt is made of some sort of compo. I can see no evidence of wood, bone, horn or ivory grain. It is very light weight so I don't think it's modern automotive bondo. The color ranges from beige to tan to chocolate brown. The chocolate brown is only in recessed areas and on the bottom of the hilt. Could this be the remnants of some sort of finish? The hilt appears to have good age to it so I don't think it's a recent tourist piece. Furthermore, neither the subject matter nor the workmanship appear to be appropriate for a tourist item. If it is indeed an old piece, how did it survive in such good condition? In my experience, compo items are rather easily broken. Could this piece have been protected by a plating of silver or brass? If so, what would be the appropriate way to replate it? Turning to the sarong, what type of wood would be most appropriate to replace the front of the gandar? (Does that front piece have a name?) And finally, when I get a mendak for the blade, what type of stones would be most appropriate (I would like the metal to be silver). Sorry for all these questions and I hope it doesn't sound confusing but I wish to restore the piece and I don't want to make any mistakes and ruin a prized antique. It goes without saying that any information received will be most appreciated.
Sincerely,
RobT

Rob, i only see the sheath and the blade tip. Where is the hilt? Would also like to see close-up of base of blade (gandik/gonjo), and an overall shot of the entire blade. Thanks.

Here's the rest
 

Woops, sorry nechesh. A browser error failed to load the pictures. They're on site now.
RobT

Very Strange
 

I have never seen that hilt form before . :confused:
What's with the almost chrome like blade finish , plated , painted ? :confused:
I think I can see a pamor structure there , also the gangya is dark in contrast to the blade . :confused:

Have you had the ukiran off the keris ?
Are there any molding lines on the ukiran ?

Lastly I would strongly suggest not fiddling with it until you know more about the piece .

no chrome
 

Thanks for your interest Rick. Please be at ease I'm not doing anything with this keris until I know exactly what to do. I am fortunate enough to be the current caretaker of this blade. When it gets passed on it will be in the same or better condition than when I got it. To answer your questions: There is no chrome on the blade and the gangya is the same color as the rest of the blade. What you see is just the result of my bad photography. The blade, although unplated, is rather light colored however and the pamor is faint. I have taken the ukirin off and there are no mold marks. Looks like we might have a puzzler on our hands.
Sincerely,
RobT

Not absolutely sure, but it seems to have wings and eagle legs/talons. Perhaps Garuda?

A VERY NICE AND UNUSUAL KERIS, I HAVE ALWAYS FAVORED THE BALINESE KERIS AS THEY HAVE A LARGE EFFECIENT BLADE AND THE HINDU INFLUENCE IS STRONG SO THERE ARE MANY DELIGHTFUL CREATURES WELL DEPICTED ON HANDLES. THE KERIS SEEMS TO BE IN GOOD SHAPE FOR ITS AGE SO I WOULD JUST USE PROTECTIVE MEASURES TO PREVENT RUST OR KILL ACTIVE RUST IF PRESENT. SOMETHING TO KEEP THE WOOD FROM DRYING OUT AND PRESERVE AND INHANCE WHAT FINISH REMAINS WOULD ALSO BE APPROPRIATE. THE MATERIAL USED ON THE HANDLE COULD BE NATURAL, IT DOSEN'T LOOK LIKE AMBER WHICH IS LIGHT WEIGHT BUT THERE MAY BE DIFFERENT TYPES AND IDENTIFING IT IN PERSON IS DIFFICULT SO IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO JUDGE FROM A PICTURE. YOU MIGHT TRY THE HOT NEEDLE TEST ON A HIDDEN PART AND CHECK THE SMELL TO SEE IF IT HAS A PLASTIC ODOR OR A MORE NATURAL STINK :D THE STONES MOSTLY USED IN BALI ARE LOW GRADE RUBYS AND SAPPHIRES MADE INTO SMALL CABASHONS. I MIGHT BE ABLE TO HELP YOU TRACK SOME DOWN IF YOU CAN'T FIND ANY 0N EBAY.
NOW FOR SOME CONJECTURE :D I WOULD SAY THE HEAD AND FACE OF THE BEASTIE FAVORS THE FRUIT BAT, I DON'T KNOW IF THERE IS ANY HINDU DIETY BASED ON THAT CREATURE OR NOT BUT THEY DO LIVE IN THE REGION. GOOD LUCK

I agree with Barry that the face is very bat-like, though the wings are not particularly. The tail also throws me and from the back it reminds me of Hanuman. Could this be some kind of composit animal. Bats do have some significance in the area, though i don't know exactly what. I have a fairly large, wooden hanging sculpture of a bat from Bali, so i wouldn't be all that surprised to find the creature in the form of a hulu. The material appears to be some kind of nature material. Maybe some kind of horn? It appears to have real age, not a new piece aged to look old. It has wear and a patina. I can't image what kind of composit material would have existed back then. Have you taken the hilt off yet?

The blade is a nice classic form, probably late 19th or early 20thC. Really needs a good etch and stain to bring out that pamor that i can just see traces off. :)

I think any uwer with real stones would look nice on here, though i am partial to the red stones like ruby and garnet.

I'm only getting the overall scabbard shot, the pic of the blade tip, and a frontal view of the figure (and 3 or 4 little boxes with red "X"s). There is a certain resemblance to the giant fruit eating "fox bat", but it does not seem to me that is the bat usually used in iconic representations; a more vampire-looking bat with a short nose and small eyes is more often seen? Hey, a Vietnamese guy looking for unexploded mines using a mak to clear off ground-vines on TV. Cool. Danger UXB, Vietnam. Bali blades do not usually have a deep etch as seen on Javanese and other k(e)ris. Is it possible the handle is stone? Hard to tell with the spottiness, etc, but the darker brown looks like it may be a deliberately applied finish; hard with a photo anyway, but also some of it appears to have been deliberately removed at some time?

OK, they all came up that time (I think; more anyway). Looks more like a rat than any other face to me. Definitely a mammal. The apelike crest of hair is indeed fairly typical of Hanuman. Hanuman is usually depicted with a shorter more Humanlike face, but there are certainly monkeys with long faces like this. Is it possible the wings are being worn, as a costume? Is there a legend where a rat/monkey/god disguises itself as an eagle or uses an eagle's wings or something? There's a harness around the whole shoulder area (except on the back, between the wings; for simplicity?) with shoulder armour? What are the two round protrusions just above the hands and below the base of the wings? It looks like those rows of lines (representing bindings?) go around both thigh and shin? A curious figure.
Clearly the Wicked Witch has been to Bali. ;)

Hanuman did have the power of flight . If you check the illustration linked you can see the similarity in the hand/arm posture .
I'm going to vote for Hanuman in a rarely seen form . The erection may simply be the knot in his waist cloth as it is commonly shown in depictions of the Monkey God :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanuman

If you look at the Bali ukiran below the figure appears to be gripping his phallus but I don't believe that is the carver's intent in this instance . When depicted in Balinese ukirans the phallus is usually detailed and unmistakable .

Yeah Tom, Oz's flying monkeys was really my first thought too. :)
The hanging Balinese bat sculpture i have is indeed this same type oflong snouted face.
Just a disclaimer, when i say etch i am not referring to a deep etch, just a bath in some fruit juice to help remove and rust and gunk. More a cleaning than an etch i suppose. But i guess the acids in the juice do etch the blade to some degree.

Oh sure he is Rick. This is obviously a depiction of an early Balinese Rap singer grapping his crouch. The club is his microphone. ;)

Sigh ........
 

Must be Spring in Cincy eh ? :rolleyes: :D
You shouldn't be talking about Bima that way , he's carrying a pretty big club . ;)

Seriously though ; I have been searching for the Bat in Bali/Hindu mythology and have come up blank so far . We do know that Hanuman was capable of changing form .

Oh yes! It's spring in Cincy aright! ;)
Here's a link to Pura Goa Lawah, a sacred bat cave temple on Bai:
http://www.edwebproject.org/bali/gallery/goalawah.html

Still Winter here . :(

Too bad there are no effigys present at the Bat cave Robin . :D

responses
 

Thanks for all your responses. I am gratified that my first thread has engendered interest and am sure we will gain understanding as a result. To that purpose I will try to reply to your comments and questions thus far.
BluErf: The creature has what appear to be wings. Whether the diagonal striations on the wings are meant to depict feathers or are just decorative I can't say. I can say that my first overall impression was bat, not bird and judging by the responses to this thread I am not alone in that. The legs are definately human as tom hyle's reference to thighs and shins points out. The feet are mammal, not bird shaped with four claws showing.
VANDOO: Your maintenance tips are about as far as I intend to go for now. I'm pretty conversant with amber in both translucent and opaque forms and I'm sure the ukiran is neither. I might try a hot pin on the inside of the peksi hole. Thanks for the mendak offer, I may take you up on that when I know more about the piece. I am in complete agreement with your fruit bat observation and since some fruit bats are called flying foxes, I thought the ukiran might be an akso in flying form. (Provided such a creature exists in the folklore.)
nechesh: The tail reminded me of Hanuman also but the rest of the creature doesn't. All the images of Hanuman I can recall seeing give the general impression of benevelent strength. I don't get that feeling of good from my hulu. Strength yes, good maybe sometimes yes, maybe sometimes no. I have to check out the flying monkeys from Oz. (Strangely enough my friend who has the movie, was talking about them in a different context just the other day.) In regards to Hanuman, it should be noted that the flying monkeys are the servants of the Wicked Witch and are most likely styled to look the part. I would be surprised to see a similar aspect on a heroic character. If the hulu is made of a natural material, it's nothing I'm familiar with as a collector of blades from Africa, the middle and far east, and eastern Europe. I have taken the hulu off but have seen nothing that would give me a clue as to its makeup. Although I have some realgar, blade etching will wait until I have perfected my technique on a few blades of lesser quality and condition. Thanks for the link to the Pura Goa Lawak cave. I had heard about the the cave and the ceremonies surrounding it from an Indonesian shopkeeper in Montreal but he couldn't recall the name of the cave.
tom hyle: Sorry the pictures aren't coming up for you. They're all there when I call up the thread. As you and others have mentioned, the fruit bat resemblance is strong. Perhaps in Indonesia, with its large number of fruit bats, it's not an atypical representation. I don't think the hulu is stone. It's almost as light as balsa wood. The dark brown could indeed have been an applied finish or an applied base coat for a finish. Whether it was deliberately removed or just wore off I can't say. As I said in my reply to nechesh, I just can't see this creature as Hanuman, for me it radiates too much malevelence. You said it yourself; "the Wicked Witch has been to Bali". The two round protrusions above the hands are the curled ends of locks of hair flanking the face. Those rows of lines around thigh and shin carry the same striations as on the bottom of the wings. I had assumed that they were continuations of the wings.
Rick: As you can see from my replys to nechesh and tom hyle, I have difficulty with the Hanuman idea. I agree with you in that all the human form phalli on bali hulu that I have seen are unmistakable as such. What about the depiction of a bat or dog member? The penis on my hulu looks appropriate for a dog or bat to me. As you say, perhaps what appears to be a phallus is in reality a waist cloth knot but aside from the necklace, I can't see any evidence of clothing on the creature and in a larger sense I get the feeling that this creature has no need for garments that preserve modesty.
Sincerely,
RobT

The pics are all there now; it's probably my computer; its protection may be set too high. That pompadour; if it's not the top of a monkey or ape what is it? Oceanic SE Asian humans do not traditionally wear such a hairstyle? Nor do bats? The detail in the pubic area looks to me like a non detailed depiction of nonaroused male genitalia; more or less triangular, more pointed and more attached at the top, perhaps pendulous underneath. I don't know that I would think of a loincloth as neccessarily meant to preserve modesty; IMHO that kind of taboo came FROM the wearing of garments; did not cause it; any man who has run thru brush nude can tell you the utility of a loincloth. Note as well that the bindings on legs and arms seem to be joined by the stripe going down the sides. This is not entirely outside of the realm of a tatoo "suit"? Note the marks on the belly; hair or tatoos? Note that the hands rest upon the "harness", perhaps as if steadying it.

THE LARGE AND TASTY GREY HEADED FRUIT BAT
 

I COULDN'T FIND A GOOD PICTURE OF THE FACE BUT I THINK THIS IS THE CREATURE FEATURED ON THE KERIS HANDLE.

Vandoo:

I think you are correct -- the animal depicted in the hilt appears to be a form of fruit bat. Many years ago, when I lived in Sydney, Australia, we had a house opposite a small park that had several very old Morton Bay Fig trees. In the summer the fruit bats (a very large form of bat) would nest at night in the trees and eat the figs. Their chattering would keep us awake at night -- no air conditioning in our old Victorian house, so we slept with the windows open. The noise was bad enough, but the odor of these bats was overpowering if you ventured into the park.

"Tasty" is not a word I would associate with fruit bats! :eek:

Ian.

Yep, the hilt does look like bat. My initial thoughts were more based on the seemingly feathered wings and the legs. I don't think the legs are human at all. Human legs don't bend forward at the knee like a bat's, or eagle's, for that matter.

The other thing is, Garuda is sometimes not depicted with a bird's face, like these couple of images I found online of Garuda carvings in temples. There's also a Balinese hilt in the small red book "The invincible kris" which depicts garuda with a 'snout' rather than a full beak.

But, I also found a bat image which looks physiologically very similar to the hilt shown here, down to the 'knob' :p The hairdo is funny, or could it be a crown? Or this hilt could be one of the fancier forms carved in Bali during its post WWII "Renaissance" where new forms of old icons emerge. I had Balinese hilt depiciting Garuda which looked like Heckle and Jeckle. :D

Here's the garuda hilt from the invincible kris.

Taking a closer look at the bat picture above, can't help but notice that even in the bat, the leg knee joints do bend in a similar fashion like human's, just that the leg has been 'rotated' 180 degrees to support the wing membrane. The knee joints bend in the opposite direction compared to birds.

But anyway, there's always a possibility that the artist had taken some artistic license on the physiological aspect of the animal form that he had intended to depict, and so strict comparisons with what we actually see in nature may not be a completely viable route to take to discern what this deity/animal form was supposed to be.

IAN I TOO HAVE LISTENED TO BE BEAUTIFUL SINGING OF THE FLYING FOX AND THE LOVELY CROONING OF THE MUTTON BIRDS ;) SEARCH FOR FLYING FOX ON GOOGLE AND THEN SELECT FLYING FOXES IN AUSTRALIA THERE IS A SOUND BITE WHERE YOU CAN GO NOSTALGIC AND LISTEN TO THE FRUIT BATS, LOVELY FOR SLEEPING ENJOY :D

IN SOME SOCIETYS THE BATS ARE CONSIDERED A DELICY BUT LIKE THE DURIAN FRUIT THEY ARE QUITE PUNGENT. IT IS ALSO A GOOD PLACE TO LOOK FOR LARGE SNAKES AROUND THEIR SLEEPING CAMPS AS IT IS A SURE FOOD SOURCE, VERY STINKY THOUGH. :eek:

Vandoo:

Thanks for that link. The sweet tones of the fruit bat are hard to forget! :rolleyes: They would definitely be an "acquired taste."

The variety that we saw mostly in Sydney was the black fruit bat. And they were big bats. Interesting to note the mystical properties attributed to eating bats, which are still considered a delicacy among indigenous populations.

Ian.

Even a bird's leg bends like a human's; just in different proportions. Consider the familiar dead chicken. The hind leg has a thigh; cognate of our thigh, with a single long bone that swings off the side of the pelvis. Jointed to it is the "drumstick" which swings back, just as our lower leg does, and has a greater and lesser long bone, just as our lower leg does. The third long part of the leg, the one that bends forward and is usually cut off before cooking in N America, is as with many quadrupeds, an elongated foot. The carving shows this as well; the leg clearly is attached at the buttocks; it goes forward, passing thru a binding (?) of some kind, comes to a rounded point, presumeably a joint, but no details of the inside of the bend; then the leg bends back, passing thru the same binding; then it comes to a similar rounded point which IS an explicit joint, the binding not being in the way of this one, and the leg/foot bends forward to end in claws. It's this whole bound knee thing, and the harnessy look of the stripes on sides arms and legs that makes me think the figure is depicted as wearing a disquise or something.
The face looks a LOT like that bat photo, except the pompadour.

Thanks for pointing out the subtleties, Tom. Looks like I need to brush up on my animal anatomy. :D

http://www.edugraphics.net/ga15-birds/ga150-ch.htm

hi! everyone,
dear Bluerf it is not the Garuda hilt of "kris gli invincibili" but Devi with its elephant and turtle. Sorry to correct you. And your Jeckle looks like more "Jatayu", sometime found as the son of Garuda or at as the evil vulture devil. I got a picture of Heckle some time ago ;)
Robt on your sarong the wood cover is missing. Usually Balinese use Kayu Pelet (Kayu wood; I don't know the Latin name) It is some kind of tiger design, light and orange in colour. And there is a sort of rib from the top to the second third of it. I have put an arrow on the picture I have taken.
For your hulu, I have seen one like that but I cannot recall where. I'm still looking trough my documentation and will come back to you, if I can find it...
For the guessing part, I don't recall any Garuda with a tail, nor a hanuman or Sugriva with wings. A Bat is a strange idea but in Bali they have an extensive imagination, so why not...

Someone said Hanuman flies in stories or something? Could this be symbolized by wings tied on as a garment, not unlike Hermes' shoes? Is there any legend about why or how Hanuman flies?

Sarong info thanks
 

A Thousand Thanks tuancd for the photo of the sarong cover. I knew mine was missing but I didn't know what it was supposed to look like. I will use a printout of your photo as a guide for making a replacement. The other Balinese sarong that I have has the cover in place but that cover and wranka lack the ridge shown in your photo. Had I not seen your photo, I would have copied the wrong style. By the way, does the cover have a specific name? One thing I am puzzled about in your post is the description of the wood as kayu pelet. I had always thought that kayu pelet was a light colored wood with dark blotches as described in Edward Frey's "The Kris" pg 43 and shown on color plate 9. I would have thought the wood you show is kemuning. I really appreciate you trying to locate the mention of a hilt like mine. I rather doubt that the creature is just some Indonesian flight of fancy. It has been my experience (admittedly limited) that keris hulu tend to be traditional in form and/or depiction and this is particularly true of figural hilts so I'm betting that my bad boy is, if not somebody specific, at least connected to some culturally significant site, ritual or occurance.
Sincerely,
RobT

Hi everyone
Robt
Have a look on plate 14 c of the same book. A burly design kemuning could also be nice but usually it's more like 10 a or 11 a.

And Guess who came for dinner last night... I found a cousin of your Hulu :D It is not a Hulu but there are many similarities like, sex, wings, crest, bulging eyes...

It comes from L'art populaire à Bali of Urs Ramseyer. I think they just republished it in a new version (english). Urs describe this little guy (plate 230) as "Caratan Cicipan" a devil bird spreading his wings and ornamenting a holy water container. The water goes through out of the penis. Terra cota from Djasi, Karangasem 14.5cm diameter and 27 cm high from the museum of Bali MB 222

It is used in ceremony of purification before mabhakti (veneration).

Hope it leads somewhere...