Does The Moro Kris Exhibit True Pamor
 

Please discuss .... :)
Yea or nay .

See you all in 16 days (or so) . :D

Rick

No surprise: Count me in for the pro faction... :)

I guess that most of the reluctance to attribute at least the twistcore as a true pamor pattern results from the missing warangan staining (not traditionally done with Moro blades) and thus different appearance.

Rick, just send me one of your twistcores and I'll post pics of the warangan stained blade which will remove your doubts. :D :rolleyes:

Regards,
Kai

Hello,

Unless I've got it wrong so far, pamor on Indo-Maly keris is a patern-welded jacket of soft nickle-iron that covers a hard steel core. Moro kris have a soft patern-welded core surrounded by the hard steel edge, so the resulting structure is different.
If these two things are taken to be the same, then would Indian patern-weld also qualify as pamor? Would Turkish Ribbon or Scandinavian twist-cores? Is pamor to denote just the look of the blade, regardless of structure?

Regards,
Emanuel

I PERSONALLY CONSIDER THE MORO KERIS TO BE A PATTEREN WELDED BLADE IN SOME INSTANCES AND MORE OFTEN WHAT USED TO BE REFERED TO AS A WATERED STEEL BLADE. I AM NOT A METAL WORKER OR KNIFE MAKER BUT MY UNDERSTANDING IS THAT.

1. WATERED STEEL BLADE PATTERN IS A RESULT OF THE NATURAL FOLDING OF THE METAL TO FORM THE BLADE WITH NO ATTEMPT TO MAKE A PATTERN.

2. PATTERENED WELDED BLADES HAVE A PRE-DETERMINED PATTEREN THAT IS INTENTIONALLY MADE USING SPECIFIC FOLDING TECKNIQUE. THESE PATTERENED PARTS ARE THEN APPLIED TO A CORE OR USED TO MAKE THE BLADE.
BOTH OF THESE TECKNIQUES OCCUR IN MORO WEAPONS OF ALL SORTS BUT THE PATTEREN WELDED BLADES ARE USUALLY FOUND IN THE KERIS AND SPEARS BUT DO OCCASIONALLY APPEAR IN OTHER FORMS OF MORO WEAPON.

THE INDONESIAN KERIS USUALLY HAS THE PARMOR WHICH IS ALSO THE SAME GENERAL TECKNIQUE AS PATTEREN WELDING BUT THE END RESULT IS QUITE A BIT DIFFERENT. THE FINISH OF THE KERIS IS VERY DIFFERENT FROM MORO WEAPONS ONE HAS A VERY ROUGH TEXTURE WHICH CAN BE FELT AS WELL AS SEEN, THE OTHER CAN BE SEEN BUT NOT FELT. KERIS FROM BALI BEING AN EXCEPTION, AS THEY ARE OFTEN FINISHED WITH A SMOOTH BLADE SURFACE THEY COME CLOSER TO THE MORO BLADES.
INDONESIAN KERIS HAVE A WIDE VARIETY OF PARMOR (PATTERNS) THAT HAVE MANY DIFFERENT MEANINGS, POWERS AND PROPERTIES BEYOND JUST LOOKING GOOD. TO MY KNOWLEGE MORO SWORDS WITH PATTERNS HAVE LOST ANY MEANING THEY MIGHT HAVE HAD ORIGINALLY IN THE PAST. :shrug: PARMOR PATTERNS ARE NOT AS APPARENT ON MALAYSIAN BLADES BUT THEY DO HAVE THE ROUGH FINISH BUT I DO NOT KNOW THE REASON?

THESE ARE JUST MY OBSERVATIONS ,OPINIONS AND ONLY THAT, AS I AM DEFINITELY NOT AN EXPERT IN THIS FIELD.
SO I VOTE MORO WEAPONS DO NOT EXHIBIT WHAT I CONSIDER PARMOR UNLESS A MORO HAPPENS TO OWN A TRADITIONAL KERIS MADE IN THE INDONESIAN WAY. :rolleyes:

The "sandwich" construction that is most often found in Indonesian/Malay keris is only one of several methods that can be used to give the blade a steel edge. Sometimes the edge is welded around the perimeter of the blade, the body of the blade being solid pamor construction.

Pamor means "mixed".

It can be, and most often is, mixed ferric material, in older keris.

I am not a student of the Moro style keris, but I own now, and have owned in the past, examples of the Moro style keris. Some of these keris have had blades that were of pattern welded construction. There is no doubt in my mind that if these blades were Javanese blades, rather than Moro blades, they would be considered by Javanese people to have pamor blades.

As to whether blades from other cultures and made of a mixture of materials can legitimately be called "pamor" blades, yes, of course they can. They are not Javanese, or Indonesian blades, but they are of mixed materials, as already noted, "pamor" means "mixed". Show mechanical damascus to a Javanese person who has never seen or heard of it, and he has no other word than "pamor" to give to it.Yes, we have other words, and perhaps our exposure is more broad, so we differentiate between one type of mixed material blade and another, and call them mechanical damascus, pattern welded, pamor, or whatever, often dependent upon the country of origin, rather than the nature of the material, but to a Javanese person, that mixed material blade will be a pamor blade.

IT WOULD BE INTERESTING TO HAVE SOME OF THE KERIS COLLECTORS AND MAKERS TAKE A LOOK AT THE VARIOUS PATTERNS FOUND IN OTHER TYPES OF WEAPONS SUCH AS MORO, PERSIAN INDIAN ECT. THEN THEY COULD FIGURE OUT WHAT TYPE OF KERIS PAMOR THEY MOST CLOSELY RESEMBLED.
IT COULD ALSO PERHAPS SHEAD SOME LIGHT ON THE ORIGINS OF THE PATTERNS IN MORO BLADES AS TO WHERE THE INFLUENCE FOR THE PATTERMS CAME FROM. FOR INSTANCE ARE THEY CLOSER TO INDONESIAN AND MALAYSIAN KERIS OR PERSIAN AND INDIAN PATTERNS?
I AM JUST GUESSING BUT THE MORO WEAPONS LOOK LIKE THEY WERE MORE INFLUENCED FROM PERSIA,INDIA,ARABIA ECT. WHAT THE WEAPONS LOOKED LIKE BEFORE THOSE TRIBES BECAME MORO IN THE PHILIPPINES IS UNKNOWN TO ME BUT WAS LIKELY WOOD,STONE AND BONE.

IT WOULD ALSO BE INTERESTING TO KNOW JUST HOW FAR BACK THE ART OF WORKING IRON GOES IN THE PHILIPPINES. IN MANY ISLAND SOCIETYS IRON WAS FIRST ENCOUNTERED THRU TRADERS AND PERHAPS SOME GROUPS MOVED IN LATER WITH IRONWORKERS.

I CAN SEE IT NOW A COLLECTOR SAYING THIS SHAMSHIR IS WOS WUTAH AND BRINGS GOOD LUCK AND PROTECTION TO THE OWNER, AND EVERYONE ELSE SAYS , WHAT!!! :D

Here is a Sulu, or Malay, Kris we discussed a couple of years ago.

Michael

Pamor to me is the pattern in the steel controlled or otherwise. So yes Moro kris in general have pamor. I have a klewang and a tulwar which both exhibit the classic grasshopper tooth pattern the klewang's pattern is considered pamor so why not the tulwar. On the other hand if the word pamor is being used only to describe specific patterns to enhance the owners luck health or to keep evil spirits away than maybe we are talking about two different things? Do Moro kris makers incorporate certain patterns to inhance a warriors spiritual powers or are these patterns just an artistic expression of said makers craft?


Lew

For my own usage I think I will reserve "pamor" for the formalized patterns seen in the Indo-Malay keris and use "pattern welded" as an umbrella term for every other type of complex lamination, be it random or controlled.

Since "pamor" as a Malay(?) word is used in the Indo-Malay culture only, I do not see the need to call non-Malay patterns by this same word. "Pamor" is also loaded with talismanic significance that is perhaps not applicable to other cultures.
I guess this whole question depends on how "pamor" is defined :shrug:

Emanuel

As already noted, "pamor" is a Javanese and Malay word. It means "mixed", or "alloyed".

A Javanese person who sees pattern welded steel, or mechanical damascus will call it it "pamor".

If we talk about a specific pamor, we first identify what it is that we are talking about, ie, "pamor", then we give it the descriptor, eg, "udan mas", so we have:- pamor udan mas.

If we are considering , say, a piece of mechanical damascus with a random pattern, we might say that it is "pamor like wos wutah".

However, once the word pamor moves outside the Javanese or Malay languages and becomes a loan word in another language, then the users of that language that has adopted the loan word will define the meaning of the word for use in that new language. Thus, if "pamor" becomes a loan word in the English language, then the English speakers can decide what that word means to them, in English. Perhaps they might decide that "pamor" only refers to Indonesian and Malaysian pattern welding. This would be reasonable, since they already have words to describe pattern welding in other cultures.

However, there can be no doubt that the nature of pamor, the nature of mechanical damascus, the nature of pattern welded ferric material are all the same, and they are seen as such by the people who own the word "pamor", that is, the speakers of Javanese, and the Malay languages.

Now, we started to talk here about the Moro keris:- does the Moro keris have pamor or not?

An English speaker who does not know the word "pamor" will say that the pattern in a Moro blade is "pattern welding", or perhaps "damascus".

A Javanese speaker will say that the pattern in a Moro keris is "pamor".

What do the people who have the Moro style keris as a part of their culture call that which a speaker of Javanese would call "pamor"?

I think this is the question that must be answered, not what we who are not a part of that culture might want to call it.

I must be going crazy because I remember reading about there being an equivalent word for "pamor" in bahasa sug, but I can't for the life of me remember where I found ot or what the word was. It wasn't Cato's book, but somewhere else.

Guh, now I won't be able to sleep tonight until I find it. :mad: