[A. G. Maisey]

Martin, I can understand your ideas about keeping a keris as it was found, & I also do not agree with the approach of carrying out full upgrades of dress, except where dress items have deteriorated to the point where no sympathetic restoration is possible.

However, having said that, I do think that there are a couple of cultural mores that we need to be aware of. How we approach or implement those in-culture values can be a bit challenging.

The complete keris, in dress, can be thought of as a socio-cultural icon. It can be representative of the family, & of the cosmos.

The blade itself, & some characteristics of the blade can have a religious association, & that blade has a male value, it is the blade that is thought of as having any sort of spiritual or esoteric value. The keris itself can be representative of its custodian. Only the keris itself, ie, the blade.

The wrongko, hilt, pendok, mendak have no value at all, except their monetary value, even though that monetary value might be very high indeed.

As it was put to me by Empu Suparman, the value of keris dress can be likened to the value of a man's clothing, it has no spiritual nor esoteric value at all, it does not tell you anything about the character of the keris that it covers, just as clothes do not tell you about the character of the man who is wearing them.

The keris itself, ie, the blade, holds all the spiritual, esoteric & cultural value. It represents the male principle & should be given the respect that would be given to a man.

Thus, when a keris blade is in poor repair, it should be respected by carrying out whatever work is necessary to bring it back to a good condition, if that is possible. Where it is not possible to bring a keris blade back into good condition, the ideal approach would be to incorporate it into a new keris.

All the dress has no spiritual value at all. The wrongko represents the female principle, & this relationship of male : female , keris : wrongko, is often used in philosophical ways and most particularly in wedding speeches.

Some keris will have more than a single wrongko, this applies particularly to keris that have a high cultural value within a family or kinship group. The appropriate wrongko is used for dress according to the occasion. The position of the wrongko to the keris can be thought of as similar to the position of a wife to her husband: a man can have many women, but a limited number of official wives, the official wives can be likened to the wrongko that has been made for the keris, the unofficial wives can be likened to the selirs who may be an adornment for the man, but who do not have the same status as a wife.

Dress can be upgraded or down graded dependent upon the economic situation of the custodian. At the present time a lot of gold & suasa pendoks are being sold as scrap gold, because of the way that gold prices have skyrocketted. Suasa can have a gold content that varies between 4ct & about 14ct.

To permit a keris to remain in dress that has deteriorated is an action that indicates that the custodian has little or no respect for the keris itself, nor for its previous custodians, nor for its maker. In simple terms, it is an insult.

It has been driven into me by a number of people that as a custodian of keris, it is my duty, my obligation, to try to bring any keris of which I have custody, to a condition where others in the future will wish to preserve that keris. This attitude is a socio-cultural Javanese attitude.

The frequently encountered attitude of out-of-culture keris collectors is that as a historic object a keris should be preserved rather than restored. This is the attitude of a collector of antiques, somebody who has a very different set of values to those of a Javanese person who is a part of established Javanese culture.

If we collect a cultural icon, any cultural icon, it is my belief that we should try our best to observe the socio-cultural values attached to that icon within its culture of origin.

The keris is a socio-cultural icon.