Is gold or suasa 'better'?

[Maurice]

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

In this matter under discussion, this is the situation as I understand it:-

The notes that G. E. Rumphius used to produce his masterwork were gathered in the 1600's and not published until the 1700's.

In this work he makes a comment based upon (at best) third or fourth hand information that infers a talismanic quality being attributed to suasa in what, at that time, was Mataram (Central Jawa).

So let us assume that it was at least rumoured that at some time, in some place suasa might have had some sort of talismanic quality attributed to it. Let us further assume that during the 1600's, in Central Jawa, suasa had a talismanic value attributed to it.

Personally, I have no problem at all with this, because in Jawa, talismanic values are attributed to just about everything under the sun (& moon & stars). Nothing exists or happens without having some sort of value being attributed to it by somebody.

However, I do have a couple of questions in respect of the comments attributed to G.E. Rumphius:-

1) are these comments on suasa sourced from a VOC journal?

2) in what published work are the reports of metallurgical examinations of suasa, sourced from the Dutch East Indies, reported?

and

3) do we know of any other historical reports that attribute talismanic qualities to suasa, in any other place in the geographic locations where suasa was produced?

I don't know why the information would be from third or fourth hand information? I can not find it anywhere. He visited the area himself, and lived since 1657 in Ambon, and in 1662 he travelled to the Banda area.
His work of 1661 foliosheets were shipped to the Republic with the ship "Waterland", but all got lost during a sea battle near "Bordeaux".
However, Johannes Camphuys, had during his life made copies of Rumphius work, and therefore it took so long in between to publish all the work of Rumphius.

Your questions:
1) Rumphius was working for the VOC as a military engineer, and I don't know if his work had been used in VOC journals. These are not published as far as I know, and to do some more research one need to have lots of time and also visit The Hague, were the journals are stored (as far as I know).
Also it is a kind of old dutch languague, which doesn't make it easy to read.
But it must be clear for everybody that Rumphius had the VOC mentality, and his work probably went much further as a VOC journal.

2) I have no idea. In his same work, where Rumphius is quoting about gold and silver tests. Again the VOC journals are many and one need to have lots of time to research them all, and find all information about suassa if there is any.

3) I will have to research Rumphius article more intensively.

Now to me also questions arise:
Do you have such old information written about gold, that this had been preferred over suassa considering its talismanic aspects?
Or is it for collectors assumably because more gold is found instead of suassa?
I came across a source, Rumphius, thanks to Loedjoe, that it was (and if this information is right or not can not be hunt down because of the big timespan I'm afraid).
You are asking me for more sources, which possibly is impossible to find without doing lots of research. But I didn't have found one of the same age which is telling gold had been preferred over suassa.