Requesting Help!! Identifying the specifics of a Kris

[A. G. Maisey]

The post that previously occupied this space was poorly worded, it was inaccurately put together and misleading.

Speed kills.

I'm driving slower this time, hopefully I can produce something sensible.

Mickey wrote:-

Does dhapur jarang goyang make you a chick magnet and/or as virile as a young stallion, or is there an altogether different kebatinan/filsafat?

To which Jaga responded:-

--- maybe it should be renamed to sering goyang.


"Jarang goyang" if read as Indonesian means "seldom shake".
"jarang" = seldom, "goyang" - shake

However, if read as Javanese "jarang" means hot water, or more precisely boiling water, and it has a minor or regional meaning that is similar to the Indonesian "seldom".

In Javanese "goyang" has the same meaning as in Indonesian.

I think that most Javanese reading "jarang goyang" would probably read it as "boiling water shake". I just ran this past a couple of Javanese native speakers and asked them to understand it as Javanese and I was told that it doesn't really make sense.

Jaga read "jarang goyang" as Bahasa Indonesia and understood it as "seldom shake" (or similar) and replied in Bahasa Indonesia with "sering goyang", "sering" means often/frequently.

OK, all well and good, but there is no keris dhapur named "jarang goyang".

The correct name is "jaran guyang".

This is Javanese, "jaran" is ngoko for "horse" ( it has secondary meanings, but in this keris context it is "horse".

The word "guyang" occurs in both ngoko & krama and it means bathing livestock (ngguyang = to bathe livestock)

However, in Javanese krama (high level) the word for horse is "kapal".

Some people call this dhapur "kapal guyang", but in ngoko and in Indonesian the word "kapal" means ship, and the word "guyang" can only be used in connection with livestock. So understood as ngoko it is senseless.

The Surakarta Pakem gives the name as "jaran guyang", and this pakem was issued under the aegis of the Karaton Surakarta, so I don't believe it is necessary to use the krama form of this keris name.