Tjikeroeh swords

[Amuk Murugul]

Hello everybody,

Originally Posted by asomotif

... mentioning a place and year is something that your normally not see on indonesian weapons...
But also the more indonesian types (with wooden animal like handles) have the name and date, so probably these are also made as souvernir...

Assuming Ian is right about the 1890 date for the klewang, that would place it in the second decade of the Aceh War. As the war lasted thirty years, it is conceivable that during this period, KNIL needed a lot more manpower, hence HARDWARE, not only for the war effort, but also to hold the areas in the archipelago it already controlled. It seems likely that they would've tried to source as much as they could, locally.
At the time, in Sumedang Regency (close to KNIL HQ), the adjacent villages of Tjikeroeh and Tjibatoe (NOT the Cibatu of Sukabumi/Bogor of recent fame) were well-known for their foundries. So one or both of them were likely to have been commissioned by KNIL to produce klewang to their specs (which may account for their European-style appearance).
If such were the case, the foundries would have simply continued the VOC practice of marking these klewang with name and year.

As for materials used for the handles: people of the region have traditionally been very utilitarian. Handles have been made from wood, buffalo horn, antler, etc, ... even RHINO HORN (Chinese traders dicovered this and started buying up these weapons just for the handles).

Regards.