Keris for ID and Comments

[OsobistGB]

Indonesian weapons are a bit outside my main interests and I know very little about it and kerises in general.
Handle: ivory maybe (there is damage on one side)
The scabbard is missing.
Can the Indonesian weapons experts venture a guess on age and area of origin?

[David]

Here's some information for you OGB. Others may follow with more.
The hilt, which looks more like bone than ivory to my eye, is a form from East Jawa known as Janggalan.
The blade form (dhapur) of this keris is called Kebo Teki. Kebo blades tend to be good for people who are involved in agricultural endeavors.
I am not sure about the pamor pattern. Looks like it might be one of the adeg (standing) patterns.
I will leave it for others to place this keris in an era. Fair to say it is certainly antique. I like keris to have IMHO. But then, i have a thing for Kebo Keris.

[Jean]

I concur with David's opinion except that the blade dapur (with 7 or possibly 9 waves and a long gandik) is not a central Javanese standard IMO. I would attribute the blade to East Java also. The hilt is made from bone.
Regards

[Jean]

See a blade with a similar dapur (except the greneng) from my collection.

[David]

Originally Posted by Jean

I concur with David's opinion except that the blade dapur (with 7 or possibly 9 waves and a long gandik) is not a central Javanese standard IMO. I would attribute the blade to East Java also. The hilt is made from bone.
Regards

I a little confused Jean. I never placed the blade as central Jawa in my description. I only placed the hilt, which i did say was East Jawa, so what is you exception to my assessment?
I would add that this blade definitely has more than 7 luk. As it exists right now it appears to be 8, as the blade definitely looks to curve again after the 7th luk. OGB, not being a collector of keris may not know that the number of curves is almost always odd. So i would assume this blade lost a bit at the tip to erosion and was most likely once a 9 luk blade.

[Jean]

Originally Posted by David

I a little confused Jean. I never placed the blade as central Jawa in my description. I only placed the hilt, which i did say was East Jawa, so what is you exception to my assessment?
I would add that this blade definitely has more than 7 luk. As it exists right now it appears to be 8, as the blade definitely looks to curve again after the 7th luk. OGB, not being a collector of keris may not know that the number of curves is almost always odd. So i would assume this blade lost a bit at the tip to erosion and was most likely once a 9 luk blade.

Hello David,
My exception is that you called the dapur Kebo Teki which is a Central Java dapur and applies to a straight blade.
Regards

[A. G. Maisey]

I had intended to stay out of this discussion, the reason being that all of the Kebo/Mahesa dhapurs are usually quite far from a standard, and almost never of the quality that we should ideally consider for classification either in terms of dhapur, or of tangguh. But in the spirit of the holiday season, I'm going to throw caution to the winds and toss my opinion into the ring.

If I were to classify this keris in accord with dhapur, I would give it as Mahesa Dengen --- or Kebo Dengen --- but I prefer Mahesa, it has more letters, sounds nicer when spoken, and is quite simply a classier word.

So, Mahesa Dengen, Luk Sembilan. Why 9 luk instead of 7 or 8?

It was made as 9 luk, thus since we can still see the evidence of what it was made as, it must be named as that. Even though there might be an 8 luk keris in existence somewhere, this one is not it. When that very rare keris with a countable number of even luk is seen, the turn of the last luk in the wrong direction is very obvious and not in any way a matter of accident.

This keris has 9 luk --- might not look that way, but this addition of the missing luk is by now a very well established convention. Anybody who has read my "Interpretation" thing will know that I do not agree with this little piece of social engineering, but, well, I'm not going to swim against the stream, if everybody is wrong, so be it, not my place to change the world.

Now, there is a little peculiarity about Dhapur Mahesa Dengan, and that is that it is virtually always Tangguh Tuban, and if we look at the pawakan and the sirah cecak of this keris, what else can it be but Tuban?

So it is neither Jawa Tengah, nor Jawa Timur, it is Jawa Utara, yaitu, Pesisiran.

My opinion:- Mahesa Dengen Luk Sembilan, Tangguh Tuban.

For the purists who might like to quibble with my mixing of Indonesian with Javanese, I excuse myself on the grounds that I am not familiar with North Coast Javanese dialect, but I do believe that it has tendency to incorporate a lot of Malay words, and since Bahasa Indonesia is based in Malay, I doubt that I would offend anybody much, if at all.

Incidentally, Mahesa Dengen is a very rare dhapur.

[Jean]

Thank you Alan for your detailed evaluation and comments. I agree with your dapur identification (not standard) and I did not realize that Tuban should be considered as part of Northern Java/ pesisiran and not East Java regarding the keris origin classification.

[David]

Originally Posted by Jean

Hello David,
My exception is that you called the dapur Kebo Teki which is a Central Java dapur and applies to a straight blade.
Regards

Thanks you Jean. I was not aware that Kebo Teki is only a Central Jawa dhapur. I am afraid that with today's standard of going wild and willy with dhapur names i was also unaware that Kebo Teki was only a designation for a lurus blade.
That said, i am taking Alan's suggestions under advisement (even if he is throwing caution to the wind here ) and will accept his description and perhaps adopt his preference for "Mahesa" over "Kebo". Sometimes it's hard to shake the terminology one is first introduce to even when a classier term comes along.

[A. G. Maisey]

Jean, Tuban is undoubtedly in East Jawa, it is about 100km west of Surabaya, but it is also a sea port on the north coast thus it is a coastal town, and in my experience people tend to regard anything along the north coast as "pesisir" rather than "West Jawa", "Central Jawa", or "East Jawa". I'd guess because of the historical reasons associated with ceding territory to the Dutch.

But insofar as keris are concerned, a classification of "Tuban" wipes out any other possibility:- we simply do not take an each way bet and classify something as Tuban then give it as East Jawa. Same idea as not giving something as Tangguh Surakarta and then adding Jawa Tengah.

In fact, Mahesa/Kebo Dengen in its standard form has five luk, it is never a straight keris, but when it varies from five luk, the number of luk should be mentioned.

On the other hand Kebo/Mahesa Teki in its standard form is a straight keris, although it is sometimes met with bearing luk, in which case we mention how many luk.

The big difference between Mahesa Teki and Mahesa Dengen is that Mahesa Teki has a plain gandhik, no kembang kacang, no lambe gajah, no jalen, whilst Mahesa Dengen has the kembang kacang, lambe gajah and jalen.

Incidentally, I cannot remember all this stuff about ricikan and dhapur, I remember bits of it that are sufficient (usually) for me to question something, then I check.

[David]

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

On the other hand Kebo/Mahesa Teki in its standard form is a straight keris, although it is sometimes met with bearing luk, in which case we mention how many luk.

The big difference between Mahesa Teki and Mahesa Dengen is that Mahesa Teki has a plain gandhik, no kembang kacang, no lambe gajah, no jalen, whilst Mahesa Dengen has the kembang kacang, lambe gajah and jalen.

Thank you for making the distinction for us Alan. I thought i had seen keris named Kebo/Mahesa Teki in the past that had luks. I should have been paying more attention to the the other ricikan.

[Mickey the Finn]

It looks like it has perhaps suffered some sort of damage, perhaps by fire? I have a very similar one, which is definitely scorched and blackened at the end (opposite where the pesi goes in). I suspect that in my case, someone may have been carrying out some sort of test, I'd assume for synthetic/real bone or ivory. Is that cleaned up fire damage or artifact of some other kind?

[A. G. Maisey]

I believe that close examination of the irregular area of the hilt will reveal that it is the core material of either bone or de-natured antler.

[Jean]

The pitting/ decay visible in the the top part of the hilt on the third pic is typical of buffalo bone IMO, but it would be useful to inspect the pesi hole also.
Regards

[David]

I agree with both these gentlemen Mickey. The pitting is the nature of the material. Perhaps yours is not fire damage either. If you post a photo we may be able to tell.