Next keris from Polish Museum

[BluErf]

Originally Posted by Boedhi Adhitya

Dear Wolviex,
... it is "the character" which make some artwork different than another. Just like any good song will bring "a mood" to you when you hear it. The same thing applied to the perfect, state-of-the art handle. It is neither the details nor the shape which make it hard to make. It is "the nuance", "proper balance", "character" or anything, you might name it, which is hard to reach. It takes talent, experience, skill, and most of all, it takes times. Old days mastercarvers or sheathmakers were fully supported by the court. They made their work while "on the mood", as any other artworks. Today carver work "on the need", or according to "the market", not the quality. And anyway, only a little, ridiculously paying attention to details collectors / keris' connoiseurs who might (and able to!) appreciate those "state-of-the art" handle, while they very little in quantity and not willing to pay more for newly made handle, so why bother ? I believe, by studying a lot of good old handles, a young, capable and talented carver might able to make the good ones. But studying more than one style is very hard, because "the character", "proper balance" or anything (as you name it before ) particular to one style might mixed up one-another, and "confuse" the carver.

I absolutely agree with this, Boedhi! You said what I had wanted to say, and so accurately!

Hi Tuan Cedric -- I thought the Durga unveiled you posted looked more like Nava Sari. The unveiled Durga I've seen Kerner's book and one that I have handled all had big conspicuous bosoms, which in your example, looked rather muted. Actually, how do we tell whether the thing held in the hand was a veil or a sheaf of rice, or a club?

[BluErf]

Here's a Nava Sari from Kerner's book.

[Tim Simmons]

I really do not know anything thing about Indonesian weapons but have enjoyed this topic.This picture, Durga killing the buffalo demon at the temple of Siva, Loro Jonggrang, Prambanan, central Java ,along with other images throughout Asia show her with these many hand gestures.The one with the folded middle fingers must be the most important as this seems to be the only one shown on the handles ,all on the left hand, so I do not think it is damage or a fault in the wood but a diliberate detail.I could be very wrong Tim.

[nechesh]

Great pictures BluErf. That first ivory (?) Durga with the balls of fire being emitted from her mouth is just too cool.
I tend to agree that Cedric's Bali example might more likely be Nava Sari. The object held behind the back appears far too stiff to be meant as a vale and looks very much like a stylized grain sheaf. Compare to the obvious fabic material held in Blu's first example.
As for Jensen's method of dating, the major problem with it (aside from it's vagueness) is that the large majority of keris have NOT been collected by museums, so it only allows us to say that a very small precentage of keris are at least this old. Since i have yet to acquire a single keris in my collection from a museum source it is of little help to me in dating my own blades. I have been fortunate to acquire most of my blades from learned sources who have spent many decades researching and studying keris in order to determine age, style, etc. as best they can. Boedhi Adhitya is right to question Tangguh, but for unprovenenced keris it is still the best method available when understood and done correctly. Something i am certainly NOT very good at, but fortunately i have sources that i feel are much more knowledgable than i that i can trust.

[Tim Simmons]

I believe the hand gesture is a represention of this, and the duality is further expressed in the hilt and scabbard of keris.Tim

[Battara]

What you have here in this image is the lingam of Shiva, representing his penis for the most part.

[Tim Simmons]

Indeed set in a yoni, showing the double-sexed nature of the deity Durga or Kali in other parts of Asia.Tim

[Tim Simmons]

These are Indian images of Kali,the great goddess,the terrible goddess {based on the source}seated on the corpse-Siva, again a dualitiy in giving and taking life.Tim

[wolviex]

Sorry for being quite for some time, but I was very busy.

Boedhi Adhitya: thank you for your further explanations. This is just what I expected to hear/read. I could exacerbate this problem, but until it isn't main subject of this discussion, I will leave childish questions "why" "why" for better times

Tuancd: thank you for your pictures. I hope they'll help us in discussion. We can clearly see, there are very visible similarities.

Tim: your pictures are great. Great work, and I want to thank you for your commitment. Your reasearches are very helpful. As far as I can understand you, these are only your theories. If so, maybe someone more familiar with mythology could explain us more

All the best!

[Tim Simmons]

Hello Woliex, this is a fasinating subjet, I would hope that what I have researched is more than my theories In the picture of Durga from the temple in Java, she is not only making the lingam-yoni symbol, she is also holding a shell trumpet on which the creative sound is made.Tim

[wolviex]

Hello Tim

I'm tending to believe in your "double-sexed nature of the deity" theory also.

[Tim Simmons]

Hello Wolviex, this is a picture of a 19th century emblem of the trumpet of Creative Sound.Tim

[wolviex]

Thanks again.

One question. If Durga, as it is mostly believed, is multi-armed goddess, why on keris handles she is depicted as two arms woman. Why are these differences made, or could an artist made such departure from the rule ??

[Tim Simmons]

This is where I leave the debate.I can only imagine there is cultural dilution, and artistic license to make an ergonomic handle for a weapon I know very little about.Tim

[nechesh]

Originally Posted by Tim Simmons

These are Indian images of Kali,the great goddess,the terrible goddess {based on the source}seated on the corpse-Siva, again a dualitiy in giving and taking life.Tim

Seated, eh? Is that what you blokes call it over over there?

[nechesh]

Originally Posted by wolviex

Thanks again.

One question. If Durga, as it is mostly believed, is multi-armed goddess, why on keris handles she is depicted as two arms woman. Why are these differences made, or could an artist made such departure from the rule ??

Just a note, the last 2 images Tim posted of a multi-armed goddess are of KALI, not Durga. While they are related deities, they are not one in the same and are depicted differently.

[marto suwignyo]

Devi, "The Goddess", or Maha Devi, "The Great Goddess" ,is the wife of the god Siva, and daughter of Himavat, Himavat being the Himalaya Mountains.

Devi has many personifications, far too many to list and explain here, however, two of these personifications are Durga and Kali.

In her terrible form she is Durga , "The Inaccessible", and takes the form of a beautiful young, yellow woman , riding on a tiger and with a fierce and threatening attitude.

As Kali or Kalika, she is black, has a hideous and terrible face , dripping with blood, encircled by snakes and wearing skulls and human heads.

We are not talking about duality here, we are talking about two ways in which the same being, Devi, is represented. Devi is also represented in many other forms, for example, as Uma, "The Light". As the wife of Siva she is the female energy of Siva, and has these two characters, one mild, the other fierce, but the two characters can be represented in many forms, all with different attributes and different actions.

The keris handle form currently under discussion is an abstract representation of a female. To extend that female representation into a representation of a Hindu goddess when the representation has none of the attributes of the goddess is a pure flight of fancy.

If one wished to hypothesise about who , or what, this female handle form may represent, one has a multitude of female associations to choose from, such as a female ancestor figure, or Sri, "Prosperity", the wife of Visnu, or even the philosophical representation of the hidden male nature of the blade, wilah, inside the observed female nature of the warangka, with the female handle form completing an external female nature concealing a hidden male nature. One could play with these sort of ideas all day.

Regretably for those who wish to make this handle form into a representation of Durga, none of Durga`s attributes are present to support this.All we have is a female form which could represent anything or anybody. Pak Boedhi has already mentioned that this handle form is unknown to him, and indeed , in Jawa this is a very rare form these days, however, those who are familiar with the form, including the only tukang jejeran I know who has carved this form in recent times, refer to it simply as "wadon"="woman", or "female".

For those with an interest in pursuing relationships within Hindu mythology, an easily accessible text is John Dowson`s "Classical Dictionary of Hindu Mythology"

[Tim Simmons]

I agree whole heartedly with a lot of what you say,I obviously got all my information from a Batman comic.Thanks Tim

[BluErf]

Actually, I must admit I only read about the hilt form being Durga in Kerner's book. Well, I suppose that's another fallacy to be dispelled, and what this forum is for.

[wolviex]

marto suwignyo: well, I must admit you entered with lightning and thunders. So...what we were talking about . Should I ask moderators to delete all the posts and should we start discussion from the beginning. Or maybe someone will rescue all of this saying just: "it is traditionally believed that it is Durga"

Thank you for your post because it will let us think about all of this once more

[nechesh]

Wolviex, why on earth would you want any of these posts deleted? The whole conversation has all been pretty interesting. Marto's post certainly put things in perspective and Blu is right to point out that the Durga reference to this hilt seems to have only been mentioned in one book, Kerner's.
If it makes you feel better, Marto points out that this hilt could represent ANY female form, so it is still POSSIBLY that it MIGHT be Durga.
It would be nice to know for sure, but as is often the case with these things, we might never know. But that shouldn't dicourage us from digging, discussing and making guesses (educated of course ).

[wolviex]

No worries nechesh - even if I asked moderators they wouldn't hear ... and I only tried to dramatize all the situation

And to be honest - I really enjoy the discussion!

And now serious - I really believe it might be Durga/Kali - maybe those Tim's pictures with two fingers visible on sculptures will lead us to some serious arguments. Anyway, those two fingers, as it was said before, aren't accidental!

[marto suwignyo]

The wadon handle under discussion is of Javanese origin. Not Central Javanese, but probably East Java .

In about 1525 the ruler of the last Hindu-Javanese kingdom of Majapahit died, but by that time Majapahit had already lost control of its former realm to the Islamic trading kingdom of Demak.Except for a small enclave of Hindu faith at the far Eastern tip of Jawa, and which was effectively an extention of Bali, all of Java was under the control of Islamic rulers by the middle of the 16th. century.

Under Islam the handles of Javanese keris became abstract forms, in most cases unrecogniseable as being distilled from humanoid forms. In those cases where a recogniseable humanoid form persisted this form was, as far as I am aware, in all cases associated with indigenous Javanese belief and tradition, rather than with specific identifiable Hindu deities. The wadon handle under discussion does not appear to pre-date 1525, which it would need to do in order to have a clear association with Hindu-Javanese beliefs.The form itself definitely continued into at least the 19th. century, as I have handled examples which could not have been any older than the 19th. century. It is difficult to accept that a Hindu goddess who does not have a position of unusual importance in indigenous Javanese belief could continue to be represented in abstract form on keris handles that were carved 300 years after the disappearance of the last Hindu-Javanese kingdom.

The left hand of the figure depicted in this wadon handle is not shown with four separate fingers, only two finger separations can be identified, rather than three, additionally, in the index finger position , the finger shown is much heavier than fingers shown on the right hand. Continuing from the termination of this index finger position is an irregular, slightly bulbous area of carving, which does not align with the flowing lines that form the base of the rest of this panel. Is it possible that what is intended is a representation of the middle finger over the index finger, with something---perhaps a blossom--- being held between the two?
Or are we indeed looking at what is supposed to be a hand position with some religious significance?
Whatever the case, I do not believe that we can identify who, or what this figure is supposed to represent upon the basis of one rather unclear feature.
I have seen two examples of this handle form that do not have the hands in the position shown on the handle under discussion. On these other two handles, one has the hands raised to cover the breasts, the other has the arms straight down by the sides, with the fingers extended. It is clear that the hand position for the figure depicted in this handle form , is not a constant. If it is not a constant, how can it be used to support an argument that this handle form represents any specific being, because of the hand position?

We may all believe what we will, but if our beliefs are to be convincing, we must provide evidence or logical argument.Currently niether one nor the other has been presented which would allow us to assign a name to the character depicted in this handle form.

[nechesh]

Though i don't think it should kill the dicussion on this beautiful keris, i think Marto's arguments are basically correct. I will point out that representative hilts such as the raksasa were produced in Jawa well past the establishment of Islam there. However, i agree that this hilt form in question probably isn't Durga.

[Rick]

Now let us talk more about this beautiful almost pristine blade . I think this blade was collected fairly early in its existence . I have been told that the quality of this blade rivals those in other very early European collections .

[wolviex]

Thank you marto suwignyo for your reply, especially for your cold logical thinking, which explained some things straight and easy. If there are really no others evidences for this handle so far, I would tend to Rick's proposal and focus on the blade (if there is anything to add). Beside - what do you think about mendak between the blade and handle?

Thank you in advance!

ps. for easy navigation I decided to repeat some of the photos

[tuancd]

Hi! everybody

I've been away, sorry to have miss the discussion.
I've read that you have buried Durga in a collective agreement.

I still wanted to show you the two pictures and "argue" a little bit more about what have been said and stated.

First Kerner is not the only one. Sier Jensen present two keris with Durga hulu
(the pictures attached)
the one with stones is before 1618 (date of collection)
the second one collected 1676.

So according what Marto says it could be earlier than 1525...

And Gaspar de Marval (author of "le monde du kriss") talks also about it and has one.

Not to mention your servitor in my article about keris Handles in Kaos n°1.

Now about the fact that it is Durga or not.

Hinduism in java as always been adapting it self from the India Hinduism mixing it with local believes and ancestor traditions. Now It is also true that al statues of Durga have a different "look" from this handle. cf the very good study about Durga (http://www.asianart.com/articles/durga/index.html).
But one statue from the 15th century has only two arms. it come from java east and should be earlier than our handle.

Now if we talk about the veil. Only two goddess have a veil in the Javanese syncretism. Loro Kidul (mostly found in south and East java) and Durga. Nobody will make me believe that it is just a veil to follow Islam rule regarding women (to modern to apply and more over in java). The said goddess wear veil
because they have been stricken by a bad spell or a plague as punishment.

Now about the fingers position. You have two kind of interpretation
first it the Indian Durga image coming from India
illustration n°3
second is the Karana mudra to expel demons and other bad spirits that I have observed on many handles.
illustration n°4

[Tim Simmons]

Well done tuancd, this is the only picture I have at home of a Durga statue with two arms, admittedly it is not from Indonesia but the National Museum. Phnom Penh. It is described as Durga, sanctuary 9, northern group, Sambor Prei Kuk, first half of 7th century. Thus illustrating a wide acceptance of a natural representation of Durga in south east Asia at one time. The hand symbol is a fact in Asia

[Tim Simmons]

Some of you may find these pictures interesting.Tim

[marto suwignyo]

Interesting.
But I think that in essence we have no advance in our understanding. Simply because several authors say the same thing, does not make that thing correct.There is a tendency, even in academia, to continue to quote previously published works, even when those works may be demonstrably inaccurate, and popular writings on the keris are not subjected to the same close critical scrutiny as are academic writings.

We still have only a female figure, with no facial features. This has been interpreted as Durga, which it may be, but it may equally be something else entirely.

I have had a look at Knick-Bumke`s article, and quite frankly, I feel that it argues against the case for this handle being a representation of Durga.

There is no dispute that Durga can be represented as a normal woman. As I stated earlier, the most common representation of Durga is as a beautiful young yellow woman riding a tiger.However, I do not know of any representation of Durga in this form in Java.

Even if it could be shown that there this an association between this handle form, and the later classical period in Java, that does not provide any evidence that the figure shown is a representation of Durga.

The hand position is still ill defined.
To interpret this hand position as anything would require a giant leap of faith. We still only have possibilities. But let us suppose that it can be interpreted as a definite, religiously symbolic hand position, that in itself would not allow us to state that the figure is a representation of Durga.Apart from which, as I advised earlier, this hand position is not a constant in all handles of this form.

On the subject of the "veiled Durga".
We can find this idea repeating itself again and again in writings about the keris, however, can we find a single monumental representation of a "veiled Durga" anywhere in Java, or in mainland India, or anywhere else?

Can we find mention of and explanation of the idea of "veiled Durga" in any religious work? Anthropological work?

The Hindu faith is not one of my strong points, and is really only a fringe interest for me in my study of the keris, so I would welcome it if somebody more well versed in this faith could direct me to some representations of a "veiled Durga" in monumental works, or to a credible religious work with explanation of this form. I rather suspect that the phrase "veiled Durga" is actually a reference to the female element represented by the Great Mother---Durga--being the source of all wisdom.

In the Hindu faith the Supreme being can be worshipped as a Male God, or as a Female God, or simply as Transcendental Bliss. We must realise that nothing we think we see is actually what we do see.

For instance, just as Durga is one of the names of Dewi, or Parvati, so Kali is another of her names. Kali is seen as a bloodthirsty character, but Kali`s activities are not destructive to the cosmic order, rather they preserve the cosmic order, as her aim is to destroy the demonic forces before these forces can cause danger to that cosmic order.

We have wandered into a discussion on religious symbolism here, and this is something that really is best left to those with training in the field. What we need to do is to find the writings of these experts and quote those writings to substantiate the existence and form of "veiled Durga".

When we begin to examine the keris in Java, we undertake the examination of a cultural artifact. For legitimate opinion to be expressed on aspects of this artifact we need to turn to the elements of the culture to allow us to understand that which we wish to come to terms with. We need to turn to history, religion, and the structure of the society itself.
So, if we would like to confirm that this handle presently under discusion is in fact a representation of Durga, I would suggest that as a bare minimum we need to satisfy the following :-
1) demonstrate the existence of a physical representation of Durga that is accepted by authorities in an academic field, or religion, as the vieled form of this Goddess.
2) provide reference to credible published works that substantiate the existence of Durga in a physically veiled form.
3) demonstrate that this veiled form of Durga was known and existed in Java.
4) demonstrate that the handle form under discussion is in fact a representation of this form.

If the "veiled Durga" truly does exist, this should not be too big an ask.
My own knowledge in this field is totally inadequate to allow me to provide such proofs, and I will welcome the veil of ignorance being lifted from my eyes by those equipped to do so.