M a j a p a h i t R e v i s i t e d

[ganjawulung]

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

...In fact, after reading it all, and spending quite a bit of time on some particular sections, what I found was that there is an enormous amount of repetition, a lot of imagination, almost no possibility of substantiation, and none of these writings can be found to go back very far in time.

Effectively, these old writings comprise recitations of elements from a belief system. Yes, they were interesting to read, and yes they do help to educate us in the attitudes and beliefs of the people who wrote them, and for whom they were written, but they do not tell us very much about the core nature of the keris

This is because, the written culture is something new to the Javanese world. In the past, all traditions had continued orally. Oral tradition was the core nature of Javanese life for almost as long as their past history. It is much different with western culture. Written tradition is their long time culture...

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

It may be as well to bear in mind that whenever we read something about the keris, what we are reading is just one point of view of one aspect of the keris. Possibly there are no ultimate, all encompassing, answers

What we must bear in our mind, that keris tradition in the past, is a "sinengker" tradition. Sometimes, keris knowledge was belonged to one person only or two persons only (between the empu and the king who commissioned the keris). Even empus in the past, had kept their outstanding ability to their death...