Twisted rods

[Gustav]

Dear Kerislovers,

today an interesting blade was auctioned. The sheath likely is not made for it. What are your thoughts about the origin of it - East Java, Bali, or Lombok?

Is there something about such Pamor Tangkis, with two rods on one, and one rod on other side?

[Battara]

Based on what I see, I was thinking on Bali.....

[A. G. Maisey]

Interesting thing you've posted here Gustav.

I'm sorry, but to make any comment on this I would need to handle it, & even then I might not be able to understand what I would need to understand before commenting.

In respect of overall perceived point of origin, yes, this does imply Bali.

[RobT]

Hi All,

Please consider this observation in light of my relative ignorance of Indonesian keris but I count 8 luk and the center ridge appears to wander off point. Could the blade have been shortened?

Sincerely,
RobT

[A. G. Maisey]

Rob, like a lot of other things with the keris, what you see is not what you get.

The picture shows how we count luk now.

But luk have been counted in different ways in different times & places.

A bloke by the name of "Maisey" has hypothesized that the keris as it had developed during the Mojopahit era in East Jawa had waves (luk) introduced into its form as a type of hierarchical indicator. This hypothesis was founded on information provided by a Bali-Hindu priest, and comparison with still existing ways in which hierarchical indicators within the Balinese socio-cultural fabric are applied now, & have in the past, been applied.

After the Islamic domination of Javanese society, and the separation of Balinese socio-cultural norms from Javanese socio-cultural norms a different method of wave count was introduced by the now Muslim overlords. The reason for this was that it was now necessary to wean the populace of Jawa away from the old Hindu-Buddhist & indigenous systems of belief and bring them under the new Islamic umbrella.

The keris was not only a weapon, it was very much more, and its symbolism was far too intertwined with the old systems of belief, so certain things needed to change. One of those things was the way in which the waves of a keris blade were counted. The new overlords did a similar thing with the Javanese wayang, & for the same reasons.

The above is an over-simplification of a simplification.

This will give a slightly better picture:-

https://kerisattosanaji.com/interpre...e-keris-page-1

even this more complete text only gives a part of the story, there is more in a chapter I contributed to a book of philosophy that was published a couple of years back, but really, I, or somebody else, needs to give some time to trying to get the whole story out there in one piece.

[A. G. Maisey]

Here is the picture.

[Gustav]

Gentlemen, thank you!

There is this blade in the National Museum of Denmark, EDb 16. Alan, we once argued, if it has one rod on one side, and two on the other. Difficult to see, because the blade is polished in Europe. If yes, it would have the same configuration of Pamor - one twisted rod on "outside", two on holders side.

Of course it likely comes from different cultural context.

[A. G. Maisey]

Possibly.

[David]

I don't know. I am inclined NOT to see a Balinese blade here. I would be interested in knowing what aspects of this Blade point to Bali for those that think so.
Gustav, do we have a blade length for this keris?

[RobT]

Alan Maisey,

Thanks for your response. I realize that there should be a ninth luk as you indicated. The problem I had was, although the center ridge appears to curve to show luk nine, the blade edges don’t. That was what prompted me to wonder if the tip of the blade hadn’t been modified.

Sincerely,
RobT

[Gustav]

David, there was only the overall length given - 61 cm. So I think, the blade length could be about 40 cm or just a little bit more.

[A. G. Maisey]

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.

[A. G. Maisey]

Gustav, in respect of your post #7.

I have now had a chance to examine my photographs and notes of EDb16.

I cannot recall that we had an argument about the way in which this pamor had been produced, but we probably did discuss it, I say this because in my notes I commented:-

"The pamor in this K. is skillfully manipulated"

as you have remarked, this pamor pattern was very difficult to see, it did not come through in my photographs, which were not particularly big images, I was using a Canon S95 & in raw, this produced images that were adequate for what I was doing at the time, but even with more modern (this was 2012 I think) & more sophisticated equipment, I doubt that the pamor could have been captured.

In fact, that pamor was so difficult to see that I sketched the motif, & here below is that sketch. I've forgotten what my impressions were at the time, but looking at the sketch, my impression now is that if a bar was used to produce this pamor, that bar was probably tightly twisted & then bent into a series of "S" bends, something similar a lawe setukal pamor, but in different orientation.

This was a large, strongly made keris, ample evidence that by the 17th century smiths in Jawa did have more than adequate skills to produce very refined blades.

After that visit to the museum's stored collections I did exchange some correspondence with the curator there, & in that correspondence I was advised that this keris was in the collection from at least 1674, possibly earlier.

[Gustav]

Alan, thank you for the insights on EDb 16.

Two more pictures from the auction house, a better view for the grasp of Blumbangan side, and the Walang Sinudhuk side of the tip.