Taming Sari???

[David]

Originally Posted by Neo

Interesting ... Could you tell me the source of this information?

Neo, did you not read the link i gave you in my first response to you?

It's not a very large article, but here is the pertinent information from it:

"Before the Taming Sari became part of the Perak Royalty's regalia, it is believed to have been a hereditary article of the family of the Laksamana (Navy Admiral) who for generations, through succession, ruled as the territorial chief of Hilir Perak.
It is believed that the last territorial chief who had the famed keris in his possession was Laksamana Mohd Amin Alang Duakap. In 1876, he was arrested alongside many other rich aristocrats of his time for the alleged involvement in the murder of the first British Resident, James W.W. Birch. Together with Datuk Shahbandar Uda Kediti (the territorial chief of Kerian), Sultan Abdullah (the reigning Perak monarch of the time) and Menteri Paduka Ngah Ibrahim (the famous administrator of tin-rich Larut), Laksamana Mohd Amin was banished to the Seychelles.
After that, the British administration in Perak seized the properties of the territorial chiefs involved and these included the Taming Sari. However, the Sultan Yussuf, who succeeded the banished Sultan Abdullah, persuaded the British not to take the keris away to England[citation needed] and managed to gain possession of the keris."

[Neo]

Sorry Boss, my bad
I've visited that Wiki page many times over but always quickly scanned that laksamana part without ever arriving at the conclusion "oh, the Sultanate did not have it until then".
DOH!

[David]

Now keep in mind that the Wiki article itself lacks any citation of source, so who is to say where the write got their information...

[A. G. Maisey]

This comment is not directly targetted at the keris under discussion, but is more in the nature of a general comment on the authenticity of all keris & etc claimed as pusaka.

I suggest a detailed and attentive reading of both Weiner and Ricklefs.

[David]

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

I suggest a detailed and attentive reading of both Weiner and Ricklefs.

Good advice indeed. Can you tell us if there is any particular book of M.C. Ricklefs' that you recommend first as he has written extensively on the area?

[A. G. Maisey]

David, I am not at home, and cannot give you correct titles and reference data, however, a good place to start might be a paper that Ricklefs wrote:

The Missing Pusakas of Kartosuro

you will probably have to go to interlibrary loan from a university to get hold of it.

There is a lot of reference to this matter, but it mostly involves reading extensive quantities of pretty boring matter for a few words, and then reading between the lines and going to that book's writer's references. There is no easy route--- well, not that I know of anyway.

There's a good book Ricklefs wrote that gives some interesting insights too, forget the correct title, but its something like Economy,Culture, War, Java 167something to 172something

[drdavid]

War, Culture and Economy in Java, 1677-1726: Asian and European Imperialism in the Early Kartasura Period (Southeast Asia Publications Series) by M. C. Ricklefs (Apr 1993)