Keris Djogya?

[A. G. Maisey]

There are a number of little things in this blade that i would accept in a lower quality Madura blade, but the principal thing that causes Madura to enter my mind is the angle of the gandhik, however, this could simply be because of the angle at which it was taken. For all practical purposes it is Jogja.

"Alas-alasan" means "like a forest" "alas" is "forest", so in an alas-alasan motif we expect to see the animals of the forest, not just birds, not necessarily elephants.

In the social scale it is an everyman's keris.

The photo is of a blade that was last stained some time before 1700, it entered the collection of a European museum before 1700. But if you stain a blade this morning & cut up tomatoes with it this afternoon, tomorrow most of the stain will be gone. How long a blade stain lasts depends entirely upon circumstances.