For Comment #3

[A. G. Maisey]

Kai, I am not at all partial to the "you said" : "I said" style of discussion that you favour, so I am not going to indulge in it. To be frank, I find this style rather annoying and something along the lines of undergraduate debate, I personally prefer discussion to debate.

One could well ask why this is so, and this is a valid question. If we debate, the intention is to destroy the opposing point of view and very often the person or party that holds that point of view. Debate is ideally suited to a situation where one person or party wishes to dominate the other, to gain the recognition of being superior in one way or another. As our politicians so frequently demonstrate, debate is the ideal vehicle for the type "A" personality to create a false impression.

I personally favour discussion, the reason being that in discussion the objective is to put forward varying points of view without the objective of domination. In discussion everybody can win, a completely different situation to debate where it is inevitable that one party to the debate will lose.

The difference between debate and discussion is the difference between aggression and harmony, and I personally regard this Forum as a discussion group, not a debating society.

I'm going to attempt to make a couple of points, and to put them as concisely as I am able, something I'm not very good at. It takes a lot of time to write both clearly and concisely.

In my post #4 my comment "Certainly not for kraton wear" was directed at the complete keris, not the wrongko alone. The atasan of the wrongko is a ladrangan style, and is suited to wear for formal occasions, those formal occasions could relate to something taking place under the aegis of a kraton, or a local center of power, or of national government, or of some commercially generated need, such as the opening of a new factory, or of some private need, such as a wedding.

There is another way in which formal dress can be used also, and that is to indicate the state of mind of the wearer. If a business owner were to visit one of his places of business in formal dress, rather than in his usual jeans and T-shirt, it would be a message to all concerned that today they had better be on their best behaviour, today's visit is serious. However, if elements of keris dress, or of personal attire are mixed, or if motifs used in personal attire are recognised as carrying a particular meaning, that also will carry a message, a message which might intensify the perceived impression, or of ameliorating the perceived impression.

The vast bulk of all formal keris dress is in the care of ordinary people and is used for ordinary purposes, and this has probably been the case since at least the middle of the 18th century. To look at a keris, any keris, and form the opinion that it could be a keris that was suitable for wear in a kraton, or of any lesser court, is fatuous speculation in the absence of a detailed knowledge of the internal regulation of the particular entity that one has in mind.

As to why this particular keris has a quite nice quality wrongko atasan, a pendok that would not normally be associated with this style of wrongko, and a hilt that tends toward the indigenous belief systems of Jawa and Madura, I have no idea at all, and I will refrain from putting forward any speculative propositions in this regard.

In respect of my use of the phrase that has generated such intense attention on your part:- "Certainly not for kraton wear".

I could have used any number of combinations of words to generate the idea that I sought to generate with this phrase, but I did not want to use more than a bare minimum of words --- in retrospect, an error on my part, as I have now written somewhere around 100 times more than I wished to write.

The idea I was attempting to generate was this:-

"In my opinion the way in which this keris is dressed is a style that I would expect to see used by a person who was not a part of the aristocratic elite of any place, but rather a middle class person who was not bound by the dress codes of the elites who held sway in the centers of power."

Please note Kai, I am stating an opinion, I am not hypothesizing, I am not putting forward the foundation of an upcoming paper, I am simply putting forward an opinion, and that opinion is founded upon my experience. Moreover, I do not really care whether anybody accepts my opinion, and I am most certainly not going to try to convince anybody that my opinion is either valid or invalid. Each of us can have our own opinion, and if your opinion varies from my own, I respect your right to hold such opinion.

Your question in respect of "underlying assumptions" seems to indicate that you assume that I have formulated some hypothetical matrix that permits me to slot this keris into its own little box. Not so Kai, no assumptions, no scholarly examination of books written by people from foreign societies, no academic analysis. Simply reliance upon more than 50 years of personal observation.

[A. G. Maisey]

Thank you for the link to the complete thread Kai. I've read through it from the point where the term "gana" first appeared. The entire discussion is about the validity of the term "gana" being applied to these natural form hilts. I have nothing to add to this matter of naming.

[Jean]

Just my contribution to this thread:
. The name "gana" for this style of hilt is known and used by all hilts collectors (including Indonesians) so it should be sufficient to validate it.
. According to the reference book from M.M Hidayat "Keris Indonesia - Estetika dan Maknna Filosofi" page 98, this style of Madurese wrongko is locally called daunan (leaves, foliage) and not ladrang (a distinct East Java style). The wrongko from Alan is peculiar because it does not include the carved motif at the back but it seems to be an old style (see a similar piece before and after refurbishing which was collected during WW1 according to its known history).
Regards

[A. G. Maisey]

Yes Jean, some people do refer to this wrongko style, when found in Madura as "daunan", personally I have a bit of a problem with this, because the word "daun" is actually Malay, the word "daun" does not appear in Javanese, and the Javanese language and Madurese language are closely related. I do not understand or speak the Madurese dialect.

"Daunan" does not mean "leaves, foliage", it means "leaf-like"; "daun-daunan" means foliage, "daun-daun" means leaves, and this is Bahasa Indonesia, not Basa Jawa. I cannot definitively state that in formal, high level Madurese the word "daun" does not exist, but my guess is that the word "daun", and its derivatives, when used in Madura, form a part of the lower level of language, that would be the Madurese equivalent of Javanese ngoko, in other words, "daun" would be a loan word from Malay.

Now, since this wrongko form is one for formal level use it follows that the word used to describe it must be acceptable for use in a level above common colloquial Madurese. My feeling is that if we were to investigate this matter, we would find that the common people use "daunan" to refer to this wrongko style, but in a higher level of language another name will be used. In view of the historically close relationship between Surakarta and the regencies of Madura, it would not surprise me if that higher level was found to be "ladrangan".

The word "ladrang" actually refers to one of the musical gamelan gendhing structures, there are several gendhing structures, and the basic structure is a cycle of 16 beats, the ladrang cycle is of 32 beats, or twice as long as the basic cycle.

Javanese names for things relate to other similar things, it is a remarkably onomatopoeic language, often the name for something will sound like the thing it refers to, so the elements of the language and the things that the language refers to are in a sense, interconnected.

Now, we all know that a gayaman wrongko is named thus because it looks similar to the fruit, or nut, of a gayam tree. So why is a ladrangan wrongko named after one of the gendhing (colotomic) structures in gamelan music? Simply because the ladrang cycle after which it is named is twice as long as the basic cycle, just as the ladrangan wrongko is twice as long as the gayaman wrongko, it is "like a ladrang cycle".

In the Javanese language, ideas do not stand alone, they relate to other things and ideas.

I considered whether or not I should use the "daunan" term to refer to this wrongko, but since I feel that this keris is not 100% Madura, but rather probably was worn on the North Coast, and since ladrang, or ladrangan is the generally accepted term for a wrongko that has a leaf-like form, I opted for the Javanese term.

Really, I'd be quite happy to call this for simply a formal wrongko, we are writing in English after all.

As to the validity of the name "gana" for this natural root-wood hilt form, I'm with you Jean, the name is entrenched now, even though the name for it might have been different in the long past, why not stick with what people use now? I think David said something similar too, didn't he?

But then was the name "gana" incorrect in the long past? Just maybe it was not. In Javanese the word "gana" has a number of different meanings, and a couple of these meanings seem to me to fit this type of hilt quite well.

[David]

I will add one more example of this sheath form for view and possible discussion. This one holds a beautifully crafted patrem, which to my understanding is a contemporary blade, though i thought at the time of acquisition that i was also told that the wrongko was an old one. This also does not have any carved motif at the back like both Alan's and Jean's examples. Obviously the pendok is more contemporary though. My source is a forum member so if he remembers more about this he might have more to add. Given this discussion i wonder if this pendok would be considered in keeping with East Jawa form or not. Regardless, i do love this little gem.

[A. G. Maisey]

I'd have no problem at all in accepting this pendok as suitable for East Jawa dress, however, even though Madura is a part of East Jawa, and even though a pendok of this type could be used on a Madura keris, it could not really be thought of as a Madura pendok, which means --- I think --- that if we came across this complete keris without knowledge of its provenance we would be in a similar position to the one that I'm in with the keris I put up for comment, and in all honesty, this is the reality of keris collecting and of keris wear, on the ground, in Indonesia.

In certain locations and situations people wear keris that have all elements of the dress correctly matched, but in other less elevated locations and situations people wear keris that are frequently comprised of conflicting elements of dress.

Real life is often very different to what we read in books.

[Bejo]

Hi,

Attached is the picture of the warongko which I think looks similar with the previous photos.

Regards,

Joe