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Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

Tell me, what do you understand from the name "karno tinandhing" ?
Karno is "ear", but what about tinandhing?
I don't understand the word, I have just asked four native speakers of Javanese, one from Solo, three from East Jawa, and none of them can give any sense to the word.
I've even had a look at several dictionaries. I cannot find it at all.
We 've got "nandhing", which I think is probably low dialect for "compare" but "ti" is not a regularised prefix, and "compare" doesn't make sense --- I think.
So tell me, what do you think "karno tinandhing" means?

This is about one of my favorite wayang idol I liked, Alan, when I was a little kid in Solo at the end of 50's. Quite a couple of times, I watched "wayang wong" (wayang play, but was played by real human. Traditional wayang theater) in Sriwedari, once popular people's park in the center of Solo city. There were a lot of Mahabharata stories played in this park, and the one I liked very much was the story of "Karna Tanding" or you may say also as the more correct word "Karna Tinanding".

Infix "in" to a basic word of "tanding" --- tinanding, shows a passive voice of the verb "tanding" (to match --- to be matched). This act of "wayang wong" on Karna Tinanding was about the match between two brothers of the same mother, Dewi Kunti. And the match was between Karna -- the first son of Kunti but was born via ear, with the magic power of Kunti's guru Resi Druwasa -- against the third son of Kunti, named as Arjuna. Karna was the son of Batara Surya (god of the sun), and Arjuna was the son of Batara Indra (god of the moon). In the end of the story -- the very long long and tiring match between the two brothers -- Karna was dead in the hand of Arjuna, by a magic arrow named Pasupati but was helped by a powerful god in wayang story, Dewa Wisnu. Both of them were riding chariot pulled by several horses. The coachman of Karna was Prabu Salya, an Astina (the left kingdom of Kurawa or you may say too, Astina) noble man, and Arjuna's coachman was Prabu Kresna one king of Pandawa (the right kingdom of Amarta or you may say too, as Pandawa) from Dwarawati kingdom. Kresna, actually was the incarnation of Dewa Wisnu -- the god of life -- in the wayang world.

Yes, you are right, Karna means "ear". Because, Basukarna -- the name of Arjuna's brother but served as a noble man in the opposite kingdom of the left, Astina (Kurawa) was born from Dewi Kunti's ear. (In the modern days of Indonesia, usually we differ to mention Karna as the brother of Arjuna, and Karno as the name of the first President of the Indonesia Republic, Bung Karno...)

So, I think the naming of keris dhapur bears name "tinanding" comes from this very popular story (in Java) of Mahabharata. The fight between the two brothers. No wonder, if the manifestation in keris' details is the two sekar kacang in one blade...

There are some keris dhapurs, bear name "tinanding". One of the most popular is "karna tinanding", a straight dhapur with two sekar kacang, two jalen and four lambe gajah, two pejetan, two tikel alis and two kruwingan..

And the other dhapur is "carang candhala tinanding" (you may see in the collection of a Solonese nobleman, Pangeran Koesoemadiningrat, as pictured in the book of Jasper and Pirngadie in Dutch language, "De Inlandsche Kunstnijverheid in Nederlaandsch Indie" 1930, page 209. A beautiful dhapur of keris I've ever known, 9 luks keris with straight point at the tip of the blade, with two sekar kacang and two pudhak sategal at the top-base of the blade...)

So, if there is a "carita keprabon" dhapur but with two sekar kacang, the logical name of the blade, of course "carita keprabon tinanding". But you will not find that in the keris Lexicon, for sure...

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