Cedric, in his "History of Java", Raffles wrote something to the effect that at the time he was there the place of the keris in Javanese society was similar to the place of the small sword in European society, 50 years earlier. Raffles came to Jawa in 1811 or 1812.
So, if we're talking 50 years earlier, we're talking around 1750, we need to remember that the Court of Mataram moved from Kartasura to Surakarta in 1745. The Kartasura era was a troubled one, the period between the death of Sultan Agung and the establishment of Karatsura was continual turmoil, Sultan Agung's reign was characterised by war and expansion, Mataram itself was established in a fashion not dissimilar to a Mafia takeover, prior to Mataram we had Pajang which again was not really rooted in peaceful legitimacy, before Pajang , Demak which replaced Majapahit following the internal tensions that had weakened the power of this once mighty kingdom. As we all know, Demak was Islamic, and as a part of Islam's gentle insinuation into Javanese society, the keris was adopted as Islam's own.
To attempt to understand the original place of the keris in Javanese society, we need to go back to at least Majapahit, and we need to try to understand the place of the keris as a whole within that society, before we can begin to understand the place of a component part of that keris.
If we consider the hilt of the keris in Islamic Jawa, I would suggest that the hilt has no role other than to complete the dress.
Consider:- the maker of a keris blade can an mpu, in which case he is a cultural descendant of the same common ancestor as the rulers of Jawa, and he has the power to create a symbolically and magically charged cultural artifact; if he is not an mpu, he is at least a pande, or a craftsman.
On the other hand, the maker of a hilt is a tukang, "tukang jejeran", in other words a tradesman. Tradesmen are not engaged in the production of magically, or symbolically charged artifacts, they simply do a job for money.
To find a time in Jawa when the role of the hilt of a keris can be interpreted in terms other than utilitarian, we need to go back a very long way in time, and we need to gain an understanding not only of Javanese society at that time, but of the underlying values of societies within Maritime South East Asia.
Cedric, I could waffle on and provide several thousand words of ideas, hypotheses and unsupported rumours, but I cannot provide a single, solid supportable comment in answer to what I understand the core intent of your question to be. If you do indeed have an intense interest in this question, you may come to some understanding of the matter if you are prepared to immerse yourself in a study of the society of early Jawa, and of other more primitive societies in Maritime SE Asia in more recent times.
I cannot give you the answer you seek.
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