Errors in Keris Literature

[A. G. Maisey]

Alam Shah, without the smallest difficulty I can find things in any book on keris that do not agree with my understandings.

My understandings have in most cases come from people whom have been considered authorities in their own right.

Some of my understandings have come from my own observations or investigations.

Now, if I identify something in some author's work, and I say :- "Such and such is incorrect", then I feel that I really should qualify that statement by providing a framework to support my disagreement.I do not think it is good enough to simply say that something is wrong because we all believe it to be wrong at any particular time.

As far as getting lost along the way, I personally think we are all pretty much wandering like blind men in the wilderness. Occasionally one may stumble across something that is perhaps more or less true in some given context, but for the most part the true essence of the keris is possibly lost beyond recall.

If these instances of incorrectness that we supposedly need to address are simple things such as names, current usages, or beliefs current when something was written, well, that's fairly lightweight stuff, and can probably be handled by listing those things which some author may have presented and presenting alongside it our own belief, which may or may not be as incorrect as that of the author.

Thus, if we are to address these things point by point, how about putting up for discussion a single major "error" of some writer, and let us have a look at it. Please, no minor things:- I wrote a 14 page letter to one author on inaccuracies in his text that could have been avoided if he had only used a competent reviewer prior to publication. Lets look at hardcore misstatements of what we currently believe to be fact.