keris in amsterdam museum

[Kiai Carita]

Helo everyone, I'm new in this forum -realy happy to see the famous Knaud keris. It seems that this keris is a Jalak Sangu Tumpeng keris which has been given sinarasah emas with the date depicted in the Javanese candra-sengkala. Traditionally people would sometimes give a gold overlay on to their keris to commemorate some victory or to show their respect to the blade. The method is called sinarasah emas and it is usually in gold. A candra sengkala is a poetic / visual narrative riddle which hides the year of the making of the candra-sengkala in the poem / illustration. Natural things have symbolic numerical value, so a man is x, the moon is y, a naga is z, and so on. Javanese memory has the oldest keris coming from the time of the Gods and the oldest mortal keris come from the times of the Buddhist kingdoms of the Syailendra dinasty in the 7'th century. As to the Knaud keris it is definitely not a Buddha keris because it has double sogokan.

I hope this post might be useful.

Kiai Carita.