When is a keris legitimate?

[Bob A]

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

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Within Javanese and other keris bearing societies there are undoubtedly many more collectors of keris than in all of the rest of the world.

At least in Javanese society, the reasons that these people collect, and thus their ideas on legitimacy in terms of their own collections, are as varied as are these reasons in the rest of the world.

I had hoped that there might be a touchstone of sorts in the way the Javanese themselves viewed the concept. Looks like we're all wandering about in the vastness of our separate sensibilities, then.

I rather like Erik's definition as a working thesis, but I suspect it's not really operable by someone outside the culture, more or less by definition.