Ethnographic Arms & Armour - View Single Post

A. G. Maisey · 16th February 2022, 10:34 PM

I'm going to throw a couple of comments into the ring. I do not wish to generate any sort of debate, but simply to assist general understandings.

Pamor names.

Pamor names vary from place to place and even from person to person.

Most of my own keris experience comes from Solo, and even within this local area I have found variation in names applied to pamor motifs. We might find that members of one group of people will use one interpretation of a motif, others will use a different interpretation and thus a different name.

Some people like to split the same pamor motif into a number of motif sub-groups, and those sub-groups might only be intelligible & accepted to a very limited number of people.

When we get to the group of people who undoubtedly have the greatest knowledge of keris and the deepest background in the keris sub-society, what I have found is that these people tend to group similar motifs into a single overall motif group that covers all similar motifs.

If an alternative name is suggested it becomes almost a matter of "call it what you will".

On the other hand, collectors in this same Javanese society will discuss for hours --- or longer --- what the "correct" name of a pamor motif should be. This "correct" name is frequently promoted without any knowledge at all of what name is used for the same motif a few hours away in, say, Malang, or even an hour down the road in Ngayogya.

So, correct?

Correct according to who?

In Solo some of the biggest & better known keris dealers have family ties that go back a couple of hundred years in the keris sub-society. They can be descended from famous m'ranggis or empus of the past, their fathers might have been m'ranggis or pande keris, their husbands might still be working as m'ranggis or pande keris. It is exactly as we find in Centini:- the market place is where we learn about keris. It is the dealers who hold the knowledge.

But the dealers do not debate with their customers, and they will not impart anything at all that is worth knowing to anybody who is not also a part of the dealer network.

My own principal tutor & mentor, Empu Suparman, was a keris dealer for many years before he became recognised as an empu. When we scrape below the surface we find that keris relationships in Central Jawa run like a hidden web just below the surface of the keris sub-society.

Keris care & preservation

It is a matter of record that I have for many years promoted the use of oil & plastic sleeves as a practical method of protecting keris.

I did not invent this method, I copied what I observed amongst keris dealers and other people in Solo who held large numbers of keris.

It is true that in Jawa & Bali people who have only one or a few keris will seldom use oil or plastic sleeves to protect a blade. Some people will smoke the blade over menyan on Thursday nights --- in Islamic belief Friday begins after sundown on Thursday, and in Islam, Friday is the Holy day. So this menyan ritual is something purely Islam, it is connected to Islam, rather than to historic keris ritual. But the ordinary people do not recognise this, Buddhists & Christians who might have a keris interest will still smoke their keris over menyan on Thursday after sundown.

This regular smoking of a blade helps to delay the onset of corrosion, and a light oiling and then a wipe down of the blade helps even more. But the storage of an oiled blade in an expensive & perhaps irreplaceable wrongko is usually avoided, the reason being that wood, being a cellulose based material will damage ferric material and oil will stain wood.

In Jawa during the wet season corrosion can begin to form within 24 hours.

So, as I said, I copied what I observed being done in Jawa. I used oil and plastic sleeves.

If one chooses not to use some form of protection for a blade , then at the very least the blade should be stored away from its expensive or valued dress wrongko and kept in a sandang walikat storage scabbard, in order to avoid damage, either by oil or by repeated handling, to the wrongko.

In less extreme climates than apply in SE Asia, we can get away with keeping a keris in its wrongko for a few years perhaps, but I have been gathering keris around me for 70 years now, I currently have somewhere between 300 & 400 keris and other edged weapons, that is not counting my pocket knives & belt knives & antique cutlery, then there are the old carbon steel hand tools that belonged to my father, his father, and my great-uncle, that I use in the normal course of benchwork & house repair --- the bits for a brace very quickly deteriorate if not kept in an oiled felt roll.

At times in the past I have had many more keris & edged weapons than I now have. I do not now, & did not ever in the past, have sufficient time to maintain a regular routine of maintenance. My objective has always been to prepare a keris correctly, and then to keep it in a way that will preserve it for those who come after me.

In 2012 I visited several large museums in Europe, several countries were involved. Before I arrived at these museums I had negotiated with the curators for permission to examine and photograph the keris which they held.

I will not comment in detail in respect of what I found, but I will give just one example.

At one very well known museum I had the opportunity to examine exactly the same keris that a well known keris writer had photographed for a reference work that he produced. One of the keris that he published a photograph of in his work, appears in perfect condition in his publication. When I got to examine it, a few years later, that beautiful keris was difficult to remove from its scabbard because corrosion was binding the blade to the scabbard, the scabbard itself needed repair.

The keris and a massive number of other historic weapons were stored higgledepigeldy in open boxes on open shelves. The storage room was constructed like an oversize bank safe, but it was guarding things that were slowly descending into a pile of rust & dust. I assume that the room was climate controlled, but since climate control costs money it might not have been.

I have worked with staff at a major Australian museum that has a few keris in storage. That museum is painfully modern. Ferric items, including keris, are stored out of scabbard on glass shelves in a strictly climate controlled environment. This is ideal storage, but I cannot afford this level of protection, so I use & advise oil & plastic sleeves.

Before I ever received any tuition from Empu Suparman I had been collecting & studying keris for around 30 years. Members of the weapon collector society in Australia and UK had often commented to me that they regarded it as their responsibility & duty to preserve the items that they held for coming generations.

When Empu Suparman began to teach me, he often repeated the same message:- I had a duty to repair, maintain & preserve any keris that I held for later generations. The "repair" duty that Pak Parman added was because he considered that as his continuation I had the knowledge to perform proper traditional repair where that was necessary. His attitude was that he was not just giving his knowledge to me, he was giving his knowledge to the other people whom I would advise & instruct, and thus assist in the preservation of a Javanese heritage.

People in Western societies who treasure the museum approach to keris are adopting a value system that is absolutely contrary to the value system of the originating society. This "do as little as possible" approach is regarded as insulting to the keris, insulting to the people who have previously had it in their care, and most of all, insulting to the maker & his memory.

People who are not immersed in Javanese keris culture observe and sometimes try to follow what they see, or at least, what they believe they see, but they seldom understand the reasons behind what they think they see, and often confuse the way in what they think they see being performed.

When we raise a keris alongside our temple we are paying respect to the memory of the maker of that keris, and to those who have had the keris in their care before us.

Some people will believe that they are paying respect to the isi of the keris, but when we see people paying respect to a keris that by its very nature cannot possibly have any isi, then we recognise the depth of ignorance that can exist, even amongst those who fervently believe that they are behaving correctly.

As I wrote at the beginning of this rather lengthy comment:- I am not up for debate. Accept or reject my comments. I offer these comments in the spirit of homage to those who have taught me.

16th February 2022, 10:34 PM	#12
A. G. Maisey Member Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 6,989	I'm going to throw a couple of comments into the ring. I do not wish to generate any sort of debate, but simply to assist general understandings. Pamor names. Pamor names vary from place to place and even from person to person. Most of my own keris experience comes from Solo, and even within this local area I have found variation in names applied to pamor motifs. We might find that members of one group of people will use one interpretation of a motif, others will use a different interpretation and thus a different name. Some people like to split the same pamor motif into a number of motif sub-groups, and those sub-groups might only be intelligible & accepted to a very limited number of people. When we get to the group of people who undoubtedly have the greatest knowledge of keris and the deepest background in the keris sub-society, what I have found is that these people tend to group similar motifs into a single overall motif group that covers all similar motifs. If an alternative name is suggested it becomes almost a matter of "call it what you will". On the other hand, collectors in this same Javanese society will discuss for hours --- or longer --- what the "correct" name of a pamor motif should be. This "correct" name is frequently promoted without any knowledge at all of what name is used for the same motif a few hours away in, say, Malang, or even an hour down the road in Ngayogya. So, correct? Correct according to who? In Solo some of the biggest & better known keris dealers have family ties that go back a couple of hundred years in the keris sub-society. They can be descended from famous m'ranggis or empus of the past, their fathers might have been m'ranggis or pande keris, their husbands might still be working as m'ranggis or pande keris. It is exactly as we find in Centini:- the market place is where we learn about keris. It is the dealers who hold the knowledge. But the dealers do not debate with their customers, and they will not impart anything at all that is worth knowing to anybody who is not also a part of the dealer network. My own principal tutor & mentor, Empu Suparman, was a keris dealer for many years before he became recognised as an empu. When we scrape below the surface we find that keris relationships in Central Jawa run like a hidden web just below the surface of the keris sub-society. Keris care & preservation It is a matter of record that I have for many years promoted the use of oil & plastic sleeves as a practical method of protecting keris. I did not invent this method, I copied what I observed amongst keris dealers and other people in Solo who held large numbers of keris. It is true that in Jawa & Bali people who have only one or a few keris will seldom use oil or plastic sleeves to protect a blade. Some people will smoke the blade over menyan on Thursday nights --- in Islamic belief Friday begins after sundown on Thursday, and in Islam, Friday is the Holy day. So this menyan ritual is something purely Islam, it is connected to Islam, rather than to historic keris ritual. But the ordinary people do not recognise this, Buddhists & Christians who might have a keris interest will still smoke their keris over menyan on Thursday after sundown. This regular smoking of a blade helps to delay the onset of corrosion, and a light oiling and then a wipe down of the blade helps even more. But the storage of an oiled blade in an expensive & perhaps irreplaceable wrongko is usually avoided, the reason being that wood, being a cellulose based material will damage ferric material and oil will stain wood. In Jawa during the wet season corrosion can begin to form within 24 hours. So, as I said, I copied what I observed being done in Jawa. I used oil and plastic sleeves. If one chooses not to use some form of protection for a blade , then at the very least the blade should be stored away from its expensive or valued dress wrongko and kept in a sandang walikat storage scabbard, in order to avoid damage, either by oil or by repeated handling, to the wrongko. In less extreme climates than apply in SE Asia, we can get away with keeping a keris in its wrongko for a few years perhaps, but I have been gathering keris around me for 70 years now, I currently have somewhere between 300 & 400 keris and other edged weapons, that is not counting my pocket knives & belt knives & antique cutlery, then there are the old carbon steel hand tools that belonged to my father, his father, and my great-uncle, that I use in the normal course of benchwork & house repair --- the bits for a brace very quickly deteriorate if not kept in an oiled felt roll. At times in the past I have had many more keris & edged weapons than I now have. I do not now, & did not ever in the past, have sufficient time to maintain a regular routine of maintenance. My objective has always been to prepare a keris correctly, and then to keep it in a way that will preserve it for those who come after me. In 2012 I visited several large museums in Europe, several countries were involved. Before I arrived at these museums I had negotiated with the curators for permission to examine and photograph the keris which they held. I will not comment in detail in respect of what I found, but I will give just one example. At one very well known museum I had the opportunity to examine exactly the same keris that a well known keris writer had photographed for a reference work that he produced. One of the keris that he published a photograph of in his work, appears in perfect condition in his publication. When I got to examine it, a few years later, that beautiful keris was difficult to remove from its scabbard because corrosion was binding the blade to the scabbard, the scabbard itself needed repair. The keris and a massive number of other historic weapons were stored higgledepigeldy in open boxes on open shelves. The storage room was constructed like an oversize bank safe, but it was guarding things that were slowly descending into a pile of rust & dust. I assume that the room was climate controlled, but since climate control costs money it might not have been. I have worked with staff at a major Australian museum that has a few keris in storage. That museum is painfully modern. Ferric items, including keris, are stored out of scabbard on glass shelves in a strictly climate controlled environment. This is ideal storage, but I cannot afford this level of protection, so I use & advise oil & plastic sleeves. Before I ever received any tuition from Empu Suparman I had been collecting & studying keris for around 30 years. Members of the weapon collector society in Australia and UK had often commented to me that they regarded it as their responsibility & duty to preserve the items that they held for coming generations. When Empu Suparman began to teach me, he often repeated the same message:- I had a duty to repair, maintain & preserve any keris that I held for later generations. The "repair" duty that Pak Parman added was because he considered that as his continuation I had the knowledge to perform proper traditional repair where that was necessary. His attitude was that he was not just giving his knowledge to me, he was giving his knowledge to the other people whom I would advise & instruct, and thus assist in the preservation of a Javanese heritage. People in Western societies who treasure the museum approach to keris are adopting a value system that is absolutely contrary to the value system of the originating society. This "do as little as possible" approach is regarded as insulting to the keris, insulting to the people who have previously had it in their care, and most of all, insulting to the maker & his memory. People who are not immersed in Javanese keris culture observe and sometimes try to follow what they see, or at least, what they believe they see, but they seldom understand the reasons behind what they think they see, and often confuse the way in what they think they see being performed. When we raise a keris alongside our temple we are paying respect to the memory of the maker of that keris, and to those who have had the keris in their care before us. Some people will believe that they are paying respect to the isi of the keris, but when we see people paying respect to a keris that by its very nature cannot possibly have any isi, then we recognise the depth of ignorance that can exist, even amongst those who fervently believe that they are behaving correctly. As I wrote at the beginning of this rather lengthy comment:- I am not up for debate. Accept or reject my comments. I offer these comments in the spirit of homage to those who have taught me.