New Keris for info

[A. G. Maisey]

Marius, the component parts that make up a complete keris have always been a case of "mix & match". Always.

Mostly we see Javanese blades in dress from various other places, this is so because Jawa was a major exporter of keris and other weapons, but the people of the Archipelago also moved all over the place, traders, farmers looking for land, craftsmen looking for employment, men marrying into a different society, women marrying into a different society, mercenaries hired by lords both great and small. So, movement of trade goods, and movement of people.

The various societies and groups of people did not stay in separate, exclusive little groups. They mixed.

Trade goods moved from one place to another.

Where a society or a group within a society --- such as a kraton and its members --- had influence over a society, keris tended to be uniform in their various component parts, or at least in their dress styles. But the further you get from the influence of a kraton, the greater the variation in the component parts of a keris.

In small, isolated groups of people, such as fishing villages or isolated farming communities you will often find complete keris that have been made up from component parts that come from every point of the compass.

I think that it is perhaps an almost universal desire of keris collectors to have all component parts of a keris matching the geographic point of origin. But in the real world things are a bit different to this.

In Bali, what we find is that the pusaka keris or krises held by a family are quite often Javanese keris, in Balinese dress, certainly, but the blades are Javanese.

This keris under discussion here is not really a very old keris, so what I have just written does not apply to it, but in general terms, and stretching back into time, it is not at all uncommon to see both blades and dress components mixed.