keris & handle for comments

[Eric]

Hello

I am new in this forum. I joined because I recently inherited a number of keris and keris related pieces about which I want to know more. I would be much obliged for any comments.
I am also an avid collector of Javanese wayang golek. If anybody shares this interest please let me know.

[kai]

Hello Eric,

Welcome to our forum!

The bone hilt seems to be from Bali; not that old (post-WW2) and was never fitted on a keris.

The keris as well as its fittings seem to be from Madura. The hilt does look village-made and post-WW2 to me; I'd guess that the blade is older but it's certainly wise to be cautious in the absence of safe indicators of age as suggested by Alan:
http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showpo...7&postcount=66

Regards,
Kai

[Gustav]

Regarding the blade, that is what Alan probably would call a ghost of a blade: there is merely a slorok left of it, with residual traces of pamor material.

Looking at how the blumbangan is made it was not so bad.

The following is of course naive, yet I always imagined, a Pusaka of common village people could look somehow like this (see also the last pictures in van Duurens publication of Gronemans book).

[Eric]

Thanks to Kai and Gustav for the comments. Can anybody point me to a good web address for keris terminology?

[sirek]

some that I like:

http://old.blades.free.fr/keris/intr...kerisparts.htm
http://blade.japet.com/KRISS/KERIS.htm
http://www.kerisattosanaji.com/PBXIIempus.html


http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=NL&hl=nl&v=aAjwWIrZyyw

[David]

Originally Posted by Eric

Thanks to Kai and Gustav for the comments. Can anybody point me to a good web address for keris terminology?

Keep in mind Eric, that when you ask such a question, keris terminology somewhat changes from island to island. Collectors have a habit of defaulting to Javanese terminology, but that isn't correct for, say, Malay Peninsula blades.

[A. G. Maisey]

What David has said about terminology is correct:- the names used for keris and keris related items vary from place to place, not only from country to country, island to island, town to town, but from one side of the street to the other, and from one person to another, depending upon hierarchical position in the particular societal group.

However, the centre of keris culture is the Jawa/Bali nexus, and the terminology used in Central Jawa has increasingly dominated the terminology used in other places, very probably because the culture of the keris in Jawa never really died during the WWII period, and its full resurgence in the period after WWII occurred earlier than in other places.

The keris as we know it now originated in Jawa, from Jawa it went to Bali where it has preserved its cultural identity until today. It also spread to other parts of S.E.Asia, where its identity tends to reflect the way in which it may have entered the particular society.In its place of origin, Jawa, it has changed its nature in accordance with sociological conditions, thus what we now see in Jawa is not what the keris was in Jawa prior to the Islamisation of Jawa. The original nature of the keris is better reflected in its position in Balinese society.

What I have written here is more than you asked for Eric, but in my opinion a small amount of basic knowledge is required before any attempts at an increase in knowledge can have any use or meaning.

Here are links to two pages which will provide you with a basic source upon which you can begin to build an understanding of the keris.

This link will take you to a glossary:-

http://www.kerisattosanaji.com/kerisglossary.html

This link will take you to a page that contains a reading list and a few other useful links:-

http://www.kerisattosanaji.com/kerisinformation.html

[kai]

Hello Eric,

I was also going to recommend Alan's glossary as a starting point; it's a fairly select choice of keris terminology though.

Rather than a general internet search and doing a lot of desperately needed cross-checking, I'd also suggest that in many cases a search on this keris forum will yield more corroborated and up-to-date information on a given word (including possible alternate spellings). It is also worth trying the search on the main forum, too, since many old threads from the days before the warung kopi are still found over there. You can also search the archived fora (some of these old discussions are somewhat dated already while others are found in the forum's best-of collection: classics .

Regards,
Kai

[David]

I might also suggest that while it is nice to know keris terms, in most cases i personally prefer to use English words where possible. So i am much more likely to use words like hilt, sheath and blade as opposed to jejeran, wrongko or wilah when writing/speaking about parts of the keris. Some features such of the gonjo don't have good English counterparts that can be use to communicate what we might be referring to so it is good to know these terms.

[A. G. Maisey]

Kai has illuminated one of the problems with keris, and indeed with the attempted study of any single aspect of a culture, or society, in the absence of a comprehensive study of the entire culture and society.

The glossary I have pointed Eric towards is indeed select. Intentionally so.

It is very much focused on the terminology applicable to Javanese keris, and even in respect of Javanese keris, the references given are restricted.

It could well be asked why I chose to provide a very restricted list of words, and words that are applicable to only one of the places where keris are found. This decision was not a particularly difficult one to make, as the primary purpose of the glossary I have provided is to provide a foundation for somebody beginning the study of the keris.

For the last 800 years at least, the dominant culture in Maritime South East Asia has been the Javanese culture, so much so that other cultures in the region have actively fought against this cultural domination. Couple this with the fact that the keris originated in Jawa, and then feed in the extensive lexicon of Javanese words that apply to the keris, and keris related matters, and it is not at all difficult to understand that the foundation stone of any serious study of the keris must begin with an understanding of the keris in Jawa, both pre-Islamic, and post-Islamic. The lexicon available to us in languages other than Javanese is simply too sparse to provide any reasonably comprehensive coverage of keris related terminology.

The alternate names for keris related matters is a separate question, and it can be a very confusing thing to deal with for almost everybody. We need to be aware that South East Asian languages were not originally written in roman script, thus when we transliterate into roman script from original scripts used in the indigenous societies, we almost invariably have a choice of letters that can be used, so a straight translation from, say, Kawi to even Bahasa Indonesia, or Modern Javanese can result in variations in spelling. If we attempt to translate from the original Kawi into a European language the spellings can again differ.

This is made even more complicated by the fact that in 1972 Indonesia decided that to enter the modern world, they needed to replace Dutch based spellings with English based spellings, so Bahasa Indonesia which had previously used a Dutch methodology to render the sounds of words correctly, changed to an English methodology to render the same sounds correctly. This resulted in a number of spelling changes, for example, TJ in a Dutch spelling became C in an English spelling --- but it is pronounced as "CH". DJ in a Dutch spelling became J in an English spelling. One particular area of confusion was the dotted A, which became an undotted A and which in Javanese is pronounced as O. Say “GANJA” in Central Jawa an you’re likely to have the police breathing down your neck. One needs to learn to pronounce that A in GANJA as an O, resulting in GONJO as closer to the correct Javanese pronunciation.

These 1972 spelling changes had been preceded by a change in 1947 when the old spelling of "OE" was changed to "U".

When the spellings in Bahasa Indonesia changed, the Javanese language followed suit.

However, try as they might, all these transliterations into roman script failed to render many spellings well enough to give a true pronunciation of the original words. For instance what English speaker could ever guess that “K” is often rendered as a glottal stop, rather than in any way known in English pronunciations. For example, the word “NUSUKAN” is pronounced very closely to “NUSU’AN”.

So, yes, Kai is 100% correct:- the glossary I have referred Eric to is limited, restricted, and Jawa-centic.

I personally feel that to present all the complexities of South East Asian languages, and the further complexities of European attempts to render the indigenous languages of S.E.Asia into roman script and the available sounds for European languages is simply too much to hit a beginner with. However, anybody who can learn the words presented in the glossary that I have linked to, and take note of the sketch of a keris shown in the information pages of that site, will have a flying start in understanding the most frequently used words in keris discussion.

But then, as David has pointed out, English is more than adequate to use with people from outside the indigenous cultures of S.E. Asia when in general discussion concerning the keris. As a general rule, I try to use English when in discussion with people from European based cultures, and when in Jawa, I use Javanese terminology.

The whole purpose of words is to move an idea from one person to another person. It doesn’t really matter what words are used, as long as we can move the idea.

[Eric]

As I suspected it will not be easy for a beginner in this field. Many thanks for the help and comments.
Eric

[A. G. Maisey]

Yes, that is so Eric:- its not easy.

But easy things tend not to hold the attention for long.

Things that need a little bit of effort, or thought, to come to terms with can hold the attention for a lifetime.

When we move into trying to understand another culture or society, or even one aspect of another culture, we expand our life beyond its immediate limits.