Two kerisses compared
 

Friends, I realise you might think I am embarking on a folly here, but please bear with me. As you already know, I have these two kerisses, a Javanese one and a Bugis from the Straits/Riau areas. Please see the pics, which I hope I have taken and arranged in a clear & big enough form. The question I want to ask you does not revolve around monetary value, neither do I require a valuation of any sort. But I do want to know something about the "worth" of these two items in comparison to one another. By "worth"-comparison I rather mean something like:
1 As genuine antique kerisses they are cultural items which I as their curator must conserve and protect, but can you collectors with knowledge and experience far superior to mine, discern that one of these two might be older than the other? It does not satisfy that I am guessing they are both "mid-nineteenth century". They are too different and not deserving to be simply clumped like that.
2 Would collectors as a group be more inclined to collect or specialise in kerisses of Javanese origin? Or would more collectors be inclined to go for the more ornate hilts of the Bugis-type kerisses?
3 Would the fact that one of my kerisses has a wavy blade, make it more desirable in the eyes of the average keris collector? And in the eyes of the people of keris culture?

Perhaps there is another aspect of keris comparison that I have missed...?
Regards
Johan

Hello Johan,

I'd suggest you are trying to compare apples to oranges here: Both were done in different cultures with different aesthetics - thus, they are bound to look different even if they happened to be born on the same day. ;)


Well, Alan originally set out to collect all keris - happily, he slacked off sometime during his project and left a few for us to play with... :D ;)

I'd venture to guess that this mainly boils down to personal preferences and/or chance (like being born into a given culture or traveling to some region first, etc.). There may be many reasons one could think of to rationalize on our individual choices; while this may be fun, arguing about preferences won't help you - just keep collecting what you like to live with! (And do leave a few keris for us... ;) )


The latter would heavily depend on which culture someone belongs to! I'm fairly sure, there is no average collector out there either! :p

Collectors in their early phase may be kinda driven towards wavy blades since they are looking more exotic. After a while, most avid collectors realize that quality is much more important than any detail like wavy vs. straight, age, you-name-it. However, how to judge quality is another can of worms or two... :)


I believe that it would certainly be worth trying to get both keris into an acceptable state for the culture of origin: The keris Jawa is complete but certainly needs warangan treatment to show all pamor details. The other keris will need more effort to complete its fittings but will certainly be worth it; it may also be a good idea to clean and etch the blade with vinegar (possibly several times to get a good finish).

Regards,
Kai

Well, Kai gave some really good answers to you inquiries, but i will just double down on his first response since it was exactly what immediately went through my mind as i read your post...Apples & Oranges.
While you may get to hear a vast array of presences from collector here (and the difference of preferences will indeed be vast) on what they like to collect and why in the end i can't see how any of their answers should necessarily have any effect on your own. Please understand though, that Indonesia is actually made of of a number of independent cultures. There can be great differences in these various keris bearing cultures in the shape and form and actual significance of the blade and dress forms. Some collectors choose to specialize while for other it is viva la difference. It would be useless for me to suggest that one of these two keris is better or worse or has more or less cultural import than the other.

Once again Johan, good and relevant questions, and Kai & David have given you good and relevant answers, as far as they were prepared to go.

You have asked several questions and I will try to answer those questions independently.

1) " --- one of these two might be older than the other? ---"

It is very difficult to put an age on any keris. There is a system in Javanese Keris Culture that purports to offer a method that can assess origin in terms of time and place (tangguh) but as its name implies, it is a system based in opinion, not in fact.

I have handled a great many keris that were taken out of S.E.Asia several hundred years ago, these keris were for the most part in "as new" condition. Considering only the blades it would be close to impossible for me to date these blades were they to be presented to me without any prior knowledge of the specific keris.

Only the blade is regarded as the essential component in the complete keris, only the blade is the keris, all dress items are just that:- dress, thus it is only the blade that we seek to date.


2) " Would collectors as a group be more inclined to collect or specialise in kerisses of Javanese origin? Or would more collectors be inclined to go for the more ornate hilts of the Bugis-type kerisses?"

Collectors in any field are as diverse as the things they collect.

With keris, personal preference varies from "everything" to, in some cases, something as narrow as only one type, style, or maker.

With the pure collector of keris, even though his preferences may vary, his basic philosophy is completely analogous with any other collector, say for example a collector of stamps, or coins, or sea shells.

However, some people who may collect, are not necessarily collectors as such:- the act of collecting is only supportive of some other objective. Using myself as an example, I started out as a non-collector, simply a custodian of a collection, I became a collector, then after I began to acquire some core understanding of what it was that I was collecting, my active collecting tapered off to an almost invisible involvement and became only one factor in a sociological/ anthropological quest for understanding.

It is probable that all of the people who are truly knowledgeable in the field of the keris have followed a similar route.

But of course, this extreme involvement is not required to simply collect, most people derive their pleasure from the object itself, and just as Kai and David have pointed out, some of us like oranges, some like apples, and some cannot get enough of either.


3) " Would the fact that one of my kerisses has a wavy blade, make it more desirable in the eyes of the average keris collector? And in the eyes of the people of keris culture?"

I don't think we can define desirability in terms of wavy blades and straight blades, this is simply not relevant either for people within a keris bearing culture or outside one.

For the pure collector there are probably two basic things that regulate desirability:-

A) difference, as in a style, form, age or whatever that is different to what that individual collector may already have

B) quality, this is something that we can learn and quantify, and it has nothing at all to do with either rarity or wavy blades

However, since the keris is above all else a socio-cultural icon, other factors can determine desirability for some people.

As an example only, I had a relative in Jawa who had a collection of keris, all of which contained the spirit of either a Pangeran (prince) or a Kyai (a respected or eminent man).

How did he know this?

If he bought a keris that he thought might contain a spirit he slept with it and the spirit came to him in a dream. No visit? Get rid of the keris.

So desirability is very much a matter of perspective.

Kai, David & Alan, I am indebted to you for your willingness to share your understanding with me on these points. I had been a little bit afraid some forumites might think my questions were a poorly disguised request for a monetary evaluation - which it definitively was not. Happily, no-one thought that.

Your well-reasoned comments are as much as I expected - it would have been very naive of me to have expected that someone be prepared to declare the Java keris come from the first third of the nineteenth century, and the Bugis from dead centre! :D However, I must then conclude that "nineteenth century" is as close as I should go for both.

On all your other comments I can only say they make a lot of sense to me. I am a collector/historian/writer, but hasten to say this is all "hobby". I have never done these things full-time. I collect things that are old and interesting, study the history behind them, and write up what I find. Examples: a Roman sestertius, a Fairbairn-Sykes commando knife, a Nepalese villager kukri with a box-sheath, a Voortrekker flintlock musket, a uniform of the WW II British Long Range Desert Group, a fossil shell from the Cretaceous period, a WW I service medal awarded to a SA Cape Coloured Corps soldier, a Mills bomb and 3" mortar grenade (deactivated), a novel printed in 1734 by Madam de Gomez, and an 1872 handwritten copy of the book of Job in metrical paraphrase by John Brigg. VIVA LA DIFFERENCE you will say! I have quite a few more.

You see, the two kerisses have given me much to study, and your help has been incaculable.

Still I am confused as to the names used in describing the keris sheath. The T-shaped piece is called the warangka, the wooden centrepiece is called the gandar, the metal oversheath is called the pendok, the end-piece is called the buntut (depending on the type of keris and where applicable). Other Indonesian languages give different names.

BUT, is there a name/word for the WHOLE sheath (all sheath parts viewed together)?
Cheers
Johan

Hello Johan,
Yes, it is confusing. The name of the T-shape piece (crosspiece) of the sheath has a specific name in some islands (sampir in Sulawesi or Sumatra, angkup in Lombok, etc.) but is just called warangka in other areas.
And warangka is the generic name for the whole scabbard, with again some specific names in some islands (wanua in Sulawesi for instance).
Other opinions are welcome on this delicate subject.
Regards

To add to the confusion you will also find different spellings of certain words. For instance, i prefer the spelling "wrongko" because it is my understanding that it is closer to the way the word is actually pronounced in Javanese.
And again, keep in mind that while the national language of Indonesia is Bahasa Indonesian all these islands also have their own languages. Indonesia is not one unified culture. It is made up of many different groups of people.
Javanese terms are often used to describe keris parts in general even though each of these separate cultures may have different terms for the same parts. This is probably because we can pretty much trace the origins of the keris back to Jawa.

addition
 

Throughout Indonesia, the more general word for the keris scabbard is "sarung", which is the traditional garment used by men and women to cover the lower body, actually just a length of cloth that is wound around the body for women, or a tube of cloth for a man. The use of this word for the keris scabbard is an indication of the philosophical relationship between the keris and a man.

The word "sarung" is correct usage in Bahasa Indonesia, the word "wrangka" is correct usage in Javanese.

In Jawa the word used by the vast bulk of keris conscious people is "wrangka", in Javanese the "a" in this word is pronounced as an "o", but the sound is made in the back of the throat, not the front, so the usual way we write the word is "wrongko", as David has advised.

In old publications we see the "a" in this word with a small dot over it, indicating the pronunciation, but with modern typewriters this dot was unable to be applied, so just the "a" was used, and the only way in which to know the pronunciation was to be able to speak the language.

The general population of Jawa, especially those people of later generations and those who are not keris conscious still seem to mostly use "sarung", rather than "wrangka".

The dictionary correct version of "wrangka" is "warangka", however the spellings "wrangka" and "rangka" are also listed in most Javanese dictionaries.
In my experience, the only time I have heard the pronunciation "warangka" is in a situation where somebody is trying to impress somebody else with his status or erudition.

The word "wrangka" correctly refers to the entire scabbard, including the gandar, but it is used loosely to refer to only the top section of the scabbard also. The top section of the scabbard is correctly named as the "gambar" (this word also means "picture"), but most of the craftsmen who actually make these scabbards call it the "atasan", which simply means "top".

The words "warangka" and "wrangka" appear in Old Javanese, and in this language they have the alternate meaning of an enclosure in which to keep livestock --- stable, yard, coop --- or a nest. Colloquially the word can also imply a prison.

A derivative of the word "wrangka" in Modern Javanese is "wrangkaning ratu", which can be loosely translated as "the ruler's protection", which in turn equates to the rank of patih, which can be understood as the ruler's chief councillor, or vice-regent, or prime minister; this usage does not seem to appear in Old Javanese, whilst the word "wrangka" for "scabbard" does appear, thus the usage associated with a court comes from the usage associated with a keris, not the other way around. Again a philosophical association between the keris and a man, in this case a ruler, is shown.

The lower part of the keris scabbard is named the "gandar", the alternate meaning of "gandar" is "something that forms a fine/good straight line", so here gandar is simply a description that through common usage has become a name, The word "gandar" does not seem to appear in Old Javanese.

The above is only a very brief and simplified explanation of the keris scabbard, when we get into the names of the various characteristics/parts/sections of the scabbard it gets considerably more complex.

Hello Alan,
Thank you for your very informative reply! :)
Regards

Friends, in concluding this thread I take pleasure in sharing with you a pic of the box I made for my Javanese keris and sheath. Although I am not a carpenter and do not have proper tools, I have enough to allow me to do this sort of thing. It was not easy, and I found I was hard to please! The box itself came out satisfactorilly the first time round, but I had to redo the inner case and red cover material, as I had gone about it the wrong way and it sucked. The pic should show that the job came out tolerably well. Still, I suppose the contents would have been deserving of a much nicer box!

The Bugis keris will get an identical box and innard, but first I will have to make a wrongko for it, and a buntut.

Now the final two pics....... dare I say here will be something to whet your appetites and lead to another bit of stimulating conversation? We know that keris blades are made with a pattern we call pamor, and that the easier pamor to accomplish is the form we call mlumah. We know the definition of mlumah. We also know what pamor miring is, and how it differs from the former. Now where do shapes similar to pamor mlumah and miring occur in NATURE? See the two pics for one possible answer.

Banded Ironstone is a sedimentary rock consisting of alternating layers of iron oxides and shale. I've had this sample in my possession for a long time. In the pics the layers are but millimetres in thickness. It seemed to me to be a natural representation of the patterns that had been crafted by the empus. The one pic shows the rock sample viewed from the top, as in "pamor mlumah", and the next viewed from the side, as in "pamor miring".

This observation struck me as being quite interesting, and perhaps worthy of sharing with you guys. Whether you agree, remains to be seen, but I have confidence.
Cheers
Johan

Since we're doing this Indonesian thing, maybe we should consider the relationship between pamor mlumah, pamor miring and Kue Lapis.

Ki Empu gets tired of pounding iron and getting burnt, orders wife to fix him some coffee and cake.

Wife whips up some Kopi Tubruk & Kue Lapis.

Ki Empu eats so much of it that when he goes back to work he's feeling a little bit crook in the guts, makes a mess of of the job he had on the go and has to twist the forging to make it stick together.

And that brothers & sisters is the true story of how pamor miring was discovered.

All because of this:-

:D :D :D Nice and funny story! Kue Lapis- enak!