Exceptional new book on keris hilts and keris

[Bjorn]

Thanks for that, Alan. Your keynote telling of the story already made it more vivid - especially with the rock form being the very final shape he took after many dastardly attempts to escape.

Perhaps Veenendaal got the story from someone on Lombok, and one of the varians there does contain the elephant form. Or he wrote down the stories so long after hearing them, that he mixed up elements or simply misremembered.

Plenty of possibilities, but all conjecture.
At any rate, this serves as a good reminder to take these descriptions of hilts with a few grains of salt.

PS: That carving of Ganesha is absolutely gorgeous.

[A. G. Maisey]

I know a little bit more about the roots of the van Veenendaal version than I care to make public Bjorn. I would prefer not to name names, but I have been told that he heard this version from a gentleman who lived in Ubud, a gentleman who was rather well known for embroidered versions of reality.

I think that in general lots of things get distorted over time, the way things might be understood now are not necessarily the way they have always been understood. Time tends to distort perception.

That Ganesha carving was done by a carver who was also a Brahmin priest, by a stroke of luck I was able to deal directly with the carver and with no bargaining at all it was given to me at an unbelievably low price.

[Ian]

Alan and Bjorn,

Thank you. I've been following this interesting story as it unfolded. It is fascinating to see just how an historical story/legend/myth can be changed through "creative" recounting that, in turn, can be picked up and amplified within and outside the original culture. This must happen far more often than we realize, which makes it hard to know what the original version may have been.

Just to illustrate within my own family. My great-grandfather settled in NE Victoria and had the job of postman in what was then a sparsely settled part of Australia. One day, while delivering the post, he came across a camp of five men whom he recognized as members of the notorious Kelly Gang. He was upon the camp and among them before he realized who they were. His only chance to escape was to pretend he didn't know who they were, so he kept riding slowly by them, exchanged some pleasantries, bid them "g'day" and kept riding slowly until out of sight. Once he got a mile away from their camp he galloped to the nearest town and raised the alarm. Of course, the gang were gone when the police finally got there. And that's the whole story as told to me by his son (my grandfather).

Fifty years later, one of my great uncles wrote a piece for the local small town newspaper with a more sensational version of the story in which the police arrived as the gang were breaking camp. Supposedly, a gunfight ensued and one of the gang was wounded before they all made their escape. This has become the "official" story in that part of the country, even though family members have tried to debunk it.

This has nothing to do with keris hilts, and sorry to stray off topic. Just another example of how historical stories get changed and sensationalized over time.

Ian.

[A. G. Maisey]

No story is so good that it cannot be improved, Ian.

[Bjorn]

Great example, Ian!

Even mundane events are easily altered. Have several colleagues recount the same work event, and usually smalld details will differ, even when only a few days have passed.

[A. G. Maisey]

A long time ago, when I used to go to seminars that were supposed to increase knowledge, ability & just general professionalism, I experienced on a couple of occasions an exercise where a story was given to one person, who then passed that story to the person next to him.

The participants were sat in a circle and by the time the story had got back to the originator of that story, it bore very little resemblance to the original story.

On one occasion each person in the circle told a story to the person on his left, by the time each of these stories returned to the original teller it bore no resemblance at all to the original.

I guess I did learn something from this:- do not issue instructions, or comments, or advice or anything, verbally. Put it in writing.

In respect of much of the knowledge or belief that is relevant to our own studies, we are often dealing with verbal traditions. We need to look very hard at some of that "knowledge", but perhaps not quite so hard at belief.

[Bjorn]

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

That Ganesha carving was done by a carver who was also a Brahmin priest, by a stroke of luck I was able to deal directly with the carver and with no bargaining at all it was given to me at an unbelievably low price.

Very fortunate indeed, Alan. One might even see it as providence, were one so inclined.