Bitten by the Keris Bug

A. G. Maisey · 3rd January 2017, 06:50 AM

Google David?

Well, google seems to be a law unto itself, so who am I to argue?

What Dr. Google has done is to omit the final letter, "s", in the word "perkakas", one of the translations of which could arguably be "appliance", but that's stretching the meaning of "appliance" a bit, the idea is that perkakas is "something to do a job with", it can also translate as "square" --- or so I've been told.

However, I think it is very colloquial usage, because "perkaka" does not appear in the hardcopy dictionaries I went to first, nor the online dictionaries I went to after that.

After a discussion with a native speaker of Malay, I am slowly coming to the opinion that the word "perkakas" is a word that has, so to speak, been pulled out of the air in order to permit a regularisation of names.

And let's be fair:- by any measure the hilt is in fact an appliance:- it permits the keris to be used. Maybe The Two Niks, or somebody else, just removed the "s" to make the word more suitable for a keris --- too many "sssss" are uncomfortable on the ear, and "keris" already has one "s".

However, be that as it may, its only in line with what happens with keris terminology all the time. I'll never forget when Empu Pauzan Pusposukadgo finished reading the second edition of Ensiklopedi --- "Where did he get all these names and words from? I've never heard of them! There is a big question here!" (Ensiklopedi was first published as "Ensiklopedi Budaya Nasional" in 1988, our "Ensiklopedi is the enlarged, expanded, questionable edition of the 1988 edition)

In respect of the "kingfisher" hilt, it actually was called a "pekakak" hilt according to Gardner, he reported what people around him in Malaya called it, because to those people it looked like a pekakak, however, when this difficult foreign word moved to Britain, the British did what they did best at that time, and they made it their own by translating it to a word they could remember:- kingfisher.

I have no argument at all as to what hilt should or should not go onto this keris. I don't know what is correct, and judging by the hilts I have seen fitted to this type of keris, its my guess that in the past, before collectors told them what was and what was not correct, most people who carried this type of keris didn't really know what was correct either, especially if they lived away from a major settlement.

The reason I posted something in the first place was because of Kai's use of the word "pekaka", which he has clarified by reference to his source where the word is "perkaka", so what piqued my interest was simply an old fashioned typo.

3rd January 2017, 06:50 AM	#11
A. G. Maisey Member Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 6,892	Google David? Well, google seems to be a law unto itself, so who am I to argue? What Dr. Google has done is to omit the final letter, "s", in the word "perkakas", one of the translations of which could arguably be "appliance", but that's stretching the meaning of "appliance" a bit, the idea is that perkakas is "something to do a job with", it can also translate as "square" --- or so I've been told. However, I think it is very colloquial usage, because "perkaka" does not appear in the hardcopy dictionaries I went to first, nor the online dictionaries I went to after that. After a discussion with a native speaker of Malay, I am slowly coming to the opinion that the word "perkakas" is a word that has, so to speak, been pulled out of the air in order to permit a regularisation of names. And let's be fair:- by any measure the hilt is in fact an appliance:- it permits the keris to be used. Maybe The Two Niks, or somebody else, just removed the "s" to make the word more suitable for a keris --- too many "sssss" are uncomfortable on the ear, and "keris" already has one "s". However, be that as it may, its only in line with what happens with keris terminology all the time. I'll never forget when Empu Pauzan Pusposukadgo finished reading the second edition of Ensiklopedi --- "Where did he get all these names and words from? I've never heard of them! There is a big question here!" (Ensiklopedi was first published as "Ensiklopedi Budaya Nasional" in 1988, our "Ensiklopedi is the enlarged, expanded, questionable edition of the 1988 edition) In respect of the "kingfisher" hilt, it actually was called a "pekakak" hilt according to Gardner, he reported what people around him in Malaya called it, because to those people it looked like a pekakak, however, when this difficult foreign word moved to Britain, the British did what they did best at that time, and they made it their own by translating it to a word they could remember:- kingfisher. I have no argument at all as to what hilt should or should not go onto this keris. I don't know what is correct, and judging by the hilts I have seen fitted to this type of keris, its my guess that in the past, before collectors told them what was and what was not correct, most people who carried this type of keris didn't really know what was correct either, especially if they lived away from a major settlement. The reason I posted something in the first place was because of Kai's use of the word "pekaka", which he has clarified by reference to his source where the word is "perkaka", so what piqued my interest was simply an old fashioned typo.