Gustav's Discovery

[Gavin Nugent]

I've taken a snippets from 4 keris and a Sundang...is this helpful and on point?

Gavin

[kai]

Hello Gavin,

I've taken a snippets from 4 keris and a Sundang...is this helpful and on point?

Well, all seem to be nice blades and deserve to be posted in dedicated threads, especially the keris Jawa and the Malay Sundang (or Sulu kalis?) IMHO.

All your examples exhibit a ron dha nunut; despite the differences in wear, it would be good to also include the whole gonjo since the carvings are often better preserved here than on the (usually thinner) blade.

In Gustav's motif/element, there is no classic ron dha nunut: the central opening in the form of the letter/syllable "dha" is missing and the "spikes"/parts/elements building the free space in-between are also of a different form. This motif is repeated on the gonjo (the best example has a replaced gonjo though) and also visible on the jenggot side (above/on the sekar kajang). I don't see this with any of your examples.

Regards,
Kai

[rasdan]

Hi Gavin,

Below is a comparison between a Malay greneng and the Javanese greneng in question. I think the Malay greneng below is a variation from the Javanese where the Dha on the Malay keris is at the normal position and the "bump" dha is probably a copy of the probably older Javanese style.

The difference is that on the Javanese examples (which is probably older), there is no Dha at the normal position, just a gap - which makes me think that the dha was shifted to the upper position on a third element that the "bump" dha style. Plus on the Javanese examples there is a gap between the ganja and the blade that resembles the gap on Megantara greneng.

The ri pandan style in your #3 and #4 in my opinion is newer development as many keris with this greneng style uses newer homogeneous steel that has no grains (probably late 1800's to early 1900's) rather than the older grainy wrought iron. (This is in the case where the keris does not use pamor - your #4 looks like it uses pamor). But this is just my amateur observation, I cannot demonstrate what I write here even as a hypothesis let alone a theory that can be proven.

[Gavin Nugent]

Thanks guys. "I feel like the child who has not yet learnt anything" like Alan mentioned in the thread leading to this point.

Gavin