Malay (?) keris from Ebay

[rasdan]

G'day Alan,

I dont know much about this, but i had attached pictures of a sundang that i used to have- with a sandang walikat sheath. The mouth have horn fittings that seems to be is original. The sheath is made from one piece drilled wood. The tip of the scabbard is horn, but is a bit damaged. I added the thread bindings to cover the defect. Everything appears to be more or less reasonably old. How old, i'm not sure.

The sheath is very slim fitting to the blade as opposed to the newer version where the tukangs will normally make it thicker to probably to reduce the risk of puncturing the wood. I didn't check the type of glue used on this particular sheath.

Many of the sundangs i've seen here in Malaysia have this sort of sheath. But, my guess is the style is not very old. The hilt and the silverwork of this particular one is a replacement as the original one is badly damaged.

The second picture that i attached is a sundang in the KL Museum of Natural History. The third one is from the same museum, but appears to have a newer sheath.

In many "reconditoned" bugis keris sheath, the addition of a strip of horn to the sheath mouth is definitely to hide the refitting of the blade to a different sheath, but in the case of the sundang, i would presume that the addition of horn to the sheath mouth is to reinforce it since sena is too soft to be shaped as a sheath mouth properly. However, i cant say when this practice started.