Ethnographic Arms & Armour - View Single Post

A. G. Maisey · Today, 12:39 PM

This is not a recent wedhung, I have owned & still do own, a number of very old wedhungs & also recent wedhungs. Pamor in recent ones is quite bright, nickel material, pamor in older ones is very often the greyish colour associated with a different type of ferric material.

All the recent wedhungs that I have seen and/or owned have not been "replicas" but have been made on order for a specific person.

Size is not an indicator of age by itself, the recent wedhungs I have handled have all been pretty large, very old wedhungs that I have handled have also been large. Small wedhungs are usually those that have been worn by women.

As for the numbers of princes. In Jawa over the past generations, the number of wives a man had, & the number of children each wife had was one of the measures of prestige. For a farmer it was perfectly understandable that he take the maximum number of wives that he could, he needed multiple wives & multiple children as workers.

For nobles the number of wives & children was pure social pressure & prestige. I know of many cases of lower ranked nobles who had only one wife, but in one case that one wife had given birth to 18 children, the lady concerned died about 20 years ago & she was well into her 90's.

Not everybody could wear a wedhung, it was required court wear for certain officials, but only princes could wear a pamor wedhung, Solyom reported this, & I have found that to be mostly true, however, I have also known higher ranked bupatis to wear a pamor wedhung. One thing is certain, lower ranked people could only wear a wedhung without pamor.

For a ruler, a Sunan/Susuhunan or a Sultan, well, he needed to be in front of everybody else. Pakubuwana XII (Alm.) who passed in 2004, had 6 official wives & an uncounted number of silirs, he had 37 officially recognised official children, 15 male, & 22 female. The males were, of course, princes. One of his unrecognised female children was the mother of my housekeeper during the times I spent in Solo, as a young woman she was a court dancer --- the mother, not the housekeeper.

Today, 12:39 PM	#7
A. G. Maisey Member Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 7,069	This is not a recent wedhung, I have owned & still do own, a number of very old wedhungs & also recent wedhungs. Pamor in recent ones is quite bright, nickel material, pamor in older ones is very often the greyish colour associated with a different type of ferric material. All the recent wedhungs that I have seen and/or owned have not been "replicas" but have been made on order for a specific person. Size is not an indicator of age by itself, the recent wedhungs I have handled have all been pretty large, very old wedhungs that I have handled have also been large. Small wedhungs are usually those that have been worn by women. As for the numbers of princes. In Jawa over the past generations, the number of wives a man had, & the number of children each wife had was one of the measures of prestige. For a farmer it was perfectly understandable that he take the maximum number of wives that he could, he needed multiple wives & multiple children as workers. For nobles the number of wives & children was pure social pressure & prestige. I know of many cases of lower ranked nobles who had only one wife, but in one case that one wife had given birth to 18 children, the lady concerned died about 20 years ago & she was well into her 90's. Not everybody could wear a wedhung, it was required court wear for certain officials, but only princes could wear a pamor wedhung, Solyom reported this, & I have found that to be mostly true, however, I have also known higher ranked bupatis to wear a pamor wedhung. One thing is certain, lower ranked people could only wear a wedhung without pamor. For a ruler, a Sunan/Susuhunan or a Sultan, well, he needed to be in front of everybody else. Pakubuwana XII (Alm.) who passed in 2004, had 6 official wives & an uncounted number of silirs, he had 37 officially recognised official children, 15 male, & 22 female. The males were, of course, princes. One of his unrecognised female children was the mother of my housekeeper during the times I spent in Solo, as a young woman she was a court dancer --- the mother, not the housekeeper.