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Originally Posted by baganing_balyan
are you sure early krises had gonjo, asymmetric blades, and other specifications according to your liking?
even the image of kris on a temple relief in java does not look like the kris you think should be.
there are even people in mindanao who call any sword with snaky blades as kris.
to most people, kris is kris because of its function and uses. It is not just a sword that you can classify according to its physical appearance.
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Asymetric, certainly. Did they all have gonjo? Not always a separate gonjo. Whether the very earliest of keris buda had a separate gonjo or just an indication of one is unclear to me.
But we are not really discussing these very early Jawa keris. We discussing kris that developed centuries later in the Philippines. I am sure that the earliest of these sword length kris did in fact have both a gonjo (almost always separate up until the early 20th century) and were in fact always asymmetrical. This is not according to my "liking". It is just the way it is.
I believe you when you say that there are people in Mindanao today who will call any snaky blade a kris. There are also people in the USA who will call any cream filled sponge cake a twinky.
You say a kris is a kris because of it's function. What is that function? How does it differ from the function of a barong or kamplian?