The 10th to 15th century Visayan kris, & earlier artifacts

[migueldiaz]

Here's a close-up of the said Visayan kris ...

[migueldiaz]

The details surrounding the Visayan kris can be found in a Univ. of Penn. PhD dissertation of a well-known Filipino archeologist, Dr. Eusebio "Bong" Dizon, from the Philippine's national museum.

The dissertation can be bought online from the university. The illustration below comes from the said paper.

Based on the graphical scale, the blade length is 36 cm (14.2"), blade thickness near the guard is 0.8 cm (5/16"), and tang length is 8 cm (3.2").

Please note also that the tang has a square/rectangular cross-section, as is the characteristic of Philippine krises.

[migueldiaz]

The textual description of the Visayan kris:

[migueldiaz]

For the technically-inclined:

[migueldiaz]

Incidentally, the dissertation covered 75 pieces from the Guthe-Michigan collection, plus another 10 artifacts from the Phil. national museum.

As to the basis of the age of the artifacts, I've just leafed through the paper (it's about 500 pages long). The 10th to 15th century dating can be found in the excerpt below.

I suppose they also used the associated Chinese ceramics excavated together with the metal artifacts. These Chinese ceramics provide a pretty accurate metric, and are used all the time ("Nacho" is an expert on this also).

[migueldiaz]

There's an artifact from Bohol in the Visayas which was initially thought to be a kris. But Dr. Dizon correctly pointed out in his paper that it is a spear:

[migueldiaz]

Now I'm not an expert on Philippine krises, much more on Indonesian and Malaysian kerises

Thus the above info are being presented for purposes of validating and further examining things.

I realize that the 10th to 15th century dating of the Visayan kris will impinge upon the commonly held view that the keris/kris came from Java. And the images found in Candi Sukuh (pics below, from Wikipedia), are supposedly one of the best proofs.

Again, you guys are the expert Would the elaboration found here and here be representative of that commonly held view?

On the other hand, what's the meaning of life if we don't reexamine our beliefs from time to time?

I've discussed the matter briefly with "Nacho" earlier. Off hand, he thinks that one explanation is that the Philippine kris and the Indonesian keris had a parallel development.

I think that's one very plausible view (instead of pitting one against the other, as to which came first).

We'd certainly like to hear more views and queries on the matter.

To broaden the perspective, I'll also be posting pics of even older blade hilts, from a recently published book on Philippine ancestral gold (10th to 13th century).