Michel, I'm going to tell you a little story.
Before I went to Jawa I had no idea at all that anything like tangguh existed. I thought I was doing pretty good if I could classify a keris according to origin in a geographic area. When I learnt and could reliably differentiate between Solo keris and Jogja keris I was regarded as a guru by local collectors.
During my first few trips to Indonesia I became aware that there was some sort of system of classifying keris that was totally beyond my understanding. I'd see old men --- always old men --- glance at the top of a keris that was still in the wrangka and pronounce it to be Tuban, or Majapahit, or whatever. Maybe they would withdraw it from the scabbard, study it for a couple of minutes and then give it as Pajajaran, or Pajang.
This was all intensely interesting, and as time went by I learnt a little more about this system, but I had no idea at all of how to use it.
Eventually I met Pak Parman and it was not until he accepted me as a student that I learnt anything worth knowing about tangguh and its application.
Pak Parman was 100% kejawen. Maybe he was 110% kejawen. If he said that a keris was Majapahit, to him, that meant that it had been made in Majapahit during the Majapahit era.
If he said that a keris was Kinom Mataram it was a keris that had been made start to finish by Kinom during the era of Sultan Agung.
This what I was taught, and it was field of knowledge that totally defied logic and reason, but as long as my teacher told me it was so, and as long as my teacher was still with us, and I was still his pupil I believed what he taught me completely.
To do otherwise would have been not only disrespectful but also incredibly stupid.
How many people from a western culture have been accepted as students by a Javanese palace empu?
To learn from Pak Parman I needed to accept and believe every word he gave me.
Without question.
The key word here is "believe".
The entire keris ethic in Central Jawa is a belief system. This includes the system of tangguh.
When you involve yourself in tangguh you need to forget reality as you understand it and adopt a Javanese world view. Time and the cosmos as it is understood by any person in a western culture does not translate into a Javanese thought pattern. You need to learn to understand everything in a different way.
Well, I struggled with tangguh and the many other things I needed to come to terms with in order to even begin to understand tangguh for years. Pak Parman though I was blind, deaf, dumb and stupid. By his standards I could not grasp even the most simple concept.
I had the very best teacher. The most knowledgeable man. Almost limitless access to excellent examples, and when I was asked to give the tangguh of something as simple as a Surakarta blade, or a Tuban blade, my mind went blank.
I think he probably gave up on me half a dozen times, but at the next visit he'd start again. He had an extremely violent temper and would lose patience with me very quickly, but the temper storm would pass as quickly as it arose and then he'd settle back into trying to get the knowledge that he had in his head into my head.
Pak Parman left us when I was in Australia. The next time I went back to Solo, a few months after his passing I went to visit his grave. The morning after I visited Pak Parman's grave I woke with a head full of ideas that I had not had when I went to sleep. It was as if every question I had ever had about keris was no longer a question but was already knowledge that I had always had. I could look at a keris and I could apply the indicators in an ordered fashion and give a supportable opinion on tangguh. I was not struggling to do this, I was doing it easily and naturally. Quite simply, I knew more when I awoke than I had when I went to sleep.
Michel, I am not a flake, and I do not have any sort of pretensions to any sort of paranormal powers. I look at everything from a base of logic and reason. However, I cannot explain what happened after my visit to Pak Parman's grave with any logic nor any reason.
The point of my story is this:-
if I had first hand tuition from perhaps the most knowledgeable man of his time in the application of the tangguh system, if the conditions under which I was taught were the very best conditions possible, if I had excellent access to excellent examples, and if after many years of this excellent tuition I still was unable to correctly and consistently apply the tangguh indicators and arrive at a supportable opinion, what hope is there for anybody to learn anything from photos and words on a computer screen?
Even if some small degree of knowledge could be gained, of what use is that knowledge without the ability to place the knowledge into a Javanese world view?
If you want to learn tangguh you must first learn to see the world through Javanese eyes.
Don't begin with tangguh and keris, but begin with trying to understand the way in which a traditional Javanese person understands the world. To do this you need to immerse yourself in Javanese culture and society. You cannot do it from computers and books.
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