Ethnographic Arms & Armour - View Single Post

A. G. Maisey · Yesterday, 11:59 PM

Rob, there almost never is a visible 9th luk in a keris, Javanese, Balinese or otherwise, the final luk at the leading end of the blade is an imaginary luk, put there because the number of luk MUST be a MALE number, that is, an uneven number. It must be a male number because the keris itself is a male entity.

If the luk of this blade were to be counted in the Hindu-Javanese manner then the luk count would be 7, which is the number of TRUE luk in this blade, but because Javanese society has been the dominant society in the region for so long, Javanese societal norms have replaced some other norms over time, this is something that other peoples in the region have been complaining about for a very long time.

So now the Islamic count dominates.

When this blade was made, the maker would have been following a pattern that would have required the point of the blade to be offset a specific distance from a vertical line beginning at the center point of the pesi (tang) at the point of its entry to the blade body (or alternatively, the gonjo) and proceeding to the point of the blade. To achieve this offset it would have been necessary to return to the forge and use hot-work, or if he was lucky, to use stock removal only. In any case, the offset dominates the required work.

This blade has suffered erosion from the time it left the maker's hands, that erosion has taken a few millimeters from its original length, but it has not been intentionally shortened by a sufficient amount for it to lose a full luk, this can be very easily seen by simply looking at proportion & what we refer to as "pawakan" (overall visual perception).

The above is the reason that the central weld line is not central to the blade edges.

A keris maker, be he an empu/Empu/mpu or a pandai keris or a pandai besi will in 99.9% of cases be working to a required pattern. This might not have been the case more than 500 years ago, but in more recent times it has been the case. Keris makers do not just pick up their tools & make whatever they please, they always have certain parameters to work to, & have had for a very long time.

Yesterday, 11:59 PM	#4
A. G. Maisey Member Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 7,099	Rob, there almost never is a visible 9th luk in a keris, Javanese, Balinese or otherwise, the final luk at the leading end of the blade is an imaginary luk, put there because the number of luk MUST be a MALE number, that is, an uneven number. It must be a male number because the keris itself is a male entity. If the luk of this blade were to be counted in the Hindu-Javanese manner then the luk count would be 7, which is the number of TRUE luk in this blade, but because Javanese society has been the dominant society in the region for so long, Javanese societal norms have replaced some other norms over time, this is something that other peoples in the region have been complaining about for a very long time. So now the Islamic count dominates. When this blade was made, the maker would have been following a pattern that would have required the point of the blade to be offset a specific distance from a vertical line beginning at the center point of the pesi (tang) at the point of its entry to the blade body (or alternatively, the gonjo) and proceeding to the point of the blade. To achieve this offset it would have been necessary to return to the forge and use hot-work, or if he was lucky, to use stock removal only. In any case, the offset dominates the required work. This blade has suffered erosion from the time it left the maker's hands, that erosion has taken a few millimeters from its original length, but it has not been intentionally shortened by a sufficient amount for it to lose a full luk, this can be very easily seen by simply looking at proportion & what we refer to as "pawakan" (overall visual perception). The above is the reason that the central weld line is not central to the blade edges. A keris maker, be he an empu/Empu/mpu or a pandai keris or a pandai besi will in 99.9% of cases be working to a required pattern. This might not have been the case more than 500 years ago, but in more recent times it has been the case. Keris makers do not just pick up their tools & make whatever they please, they always have certain parameters to work to, & have had for a very long time.