Is it a Tajong?

[milandro]

Another Resurrection

Originally Posted by David

I think that this all brings me to the question of what exactly describes a proper tajong? Is it merely the name of the dress form or does it also describe the blade as well? I have never seen a tajong with a blade like this. Does this mean this is not a tajong? If it is merely a name for the dress form regardless of the type of blade within then i think we must approach the original question from an examination of just the dress. In my limited scope in the understanding of tajong hilts i look at this hilt and it doesn't look quite right to me. That is to say that the eyes don't seem to be in the right place and the carved patterns don't look particularly like what i have seen on other hilts. So i wonder, is there something that would be considered to be like a "pakem" for the design of these hilts? Does this hilt meet the standards for that "pakem" if such a guideline exists? If not, is it still a tajong?.....

Having acquired a Panjang which came with a Tajong hilt I am now looking to acquire informations about Tajongs.

I too am somewhat confused from what I see for sale as a Tajong.

Some show only a Tajong hilt mounted on krises which could be Bugis or I found even one were a Yogyakarta keris has a Tajong hilt (not unlike My Panjang which came with such an hilt ).

Aside from what the pendongkok should look like and the hilt is there any typical characteristic of the blade?

Perhaps the answer is contained in this post.


http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showpo...6&postcount=11



"...Hi Jeff,

Your tajong hilts are the real stuff. The blades you have shown in the 2 links above are not the normal type of blade normally associated as tajongs. The most common forms are the straight "pandai saras" blade form, followed by the wavy "pandai saras" blade form and the "carita" blade form, in approximately similar rarity. Please note that the use of the term "carita" (pronounced "cher-rita") is not the same as the Javanese context. "Carita" in the Malay keris world refers to blades with shallow fullers running nearly the full length of the blade. If the fullers had been deeper, they would be called "melela". Again "melala" here is different from the "melela" used in the Javanese context, which is often used to describe "besi melela", or metal without visible pamor patterns. I am not good with Javanese kerises, so I would defer the explanations on these to the other members who are more knowledgeable in Javanese kerises.

Anyway, the 3 common keris forms for tajongs are attached below. Please ignore the hilts, as these hilts (of the jawa demam form) can also be appropriately paired with such blades, but then of course, the keris would not be called a tajong. There are other Malay keris forms found on tajongs, but would be the exception, rather than the rule.

Kerises and keris parts travel in the archipelago. This exchange of parts is also what fuels the exchange of aesthetics and forms, contributing to the variation of keris blades and keris dress/hilt forms, and they also cause mis-matched kerises to turn up all the time. And of course, we cannot discount dealers and collectors who swap hilts and blades around for all sorts of reasons, even if they don't really conform to the archetypal forms. I'm afraid your question would not be easily answered. You have to learn from good books, good teachers, and from handling as many kerises as you can, and that is a long hard but fun road.

A proper tajong - hilt, sheath and blade - is illustrated in the 4th and 5th pic. Arguably, the defining characteristics of a tajong are the hilt and the sheath. Any other types of hilts and sheaths would make it hard for us to call the resulting keris a proper tajong. Note that Northern Malay aesthetics dictates that the sheath must be long and lanky, with the sheath stem much longer than the blade. I have seen some people (I refuse to call them "collectors") shorten the stem so that it is just slightly longer than the blade. This was because they liked the keris that way. But in my opinion, that is just destroying the original aesthetics of the tajong keris, not to mention, ruining a perfectly good antique sheath....."



and these are the pics from that post (linking those here shouldn't be a problem since they are on the forum vaults)