Mantras keris and empu

[Bob A]

Thank you for your reply, Alan.

Of course, my post was sketchy and limited in scope. I did not mean to deny the actuality of a hidden stream of knowledge, though I'm interested to learn that it exists (existed?) in a caste-based system in Javanese society. In other societies of which I have limited awareness, such transmission is not so tightly restricted, at least not in that particular form.

[Seerp Visser]

Very interesting discussion about the mantra's and the "secrets"of the keris.

I like to react on some of the statements,

Pusaka
One teacher said to me what you know makes you unique, giving it away is giving away your uniqueness.

As teacher forging at the Academy of Arts in Antwerp Belgium (retired), i can understand what your teacher means, but my experience is different. Giving my know-how away, i think, made many other people more unique. I myself don't have the feeling that i lost anything of my own.

Here in Belgium we have another saying "When you learn a monkey climbing, it climbs over you". In fact, when i see the work what some of my students make these days, i admire their work and i think they surpassed me. This gives me a very satisfying feeling.

Especially for the forging of a keris, to my opinion, there is no problem to learn somebody where he asks for. The information you give can only be useful to somebody, on the moment he reaches the point of development where the given information can help him further on the way.
Somebody starting to learn the way a keris is forged, must be a quite good blacksmith anyway and still needs some years practice to come to the point where he is capable to forge his first "acceptable" keris.

Alam Shaka
You do not give information to people who do not have sufficient knowledge to understand what" you have given them. You do not give the key"

I think, every blacksmith trying to forge a keris will have to go a long way and i hope for him that he will find "The Key". To my opinion to find the key is something you only can do yourself, after a long way of stumbling.

I did not forge a keris myself, but i am studying the forging of a lot of five keris, forged by the empu Karja di Krama in 1904. The work was attended by Dr. Groneman who made an article about the work, what was published in 1910.
Dr. Groneman was a medicine and quite precise. He made an extensive description of the work. I could learn quite a lot from this work. Still i get the feeling that, after four years of study, i did not find "The key" yet.

Karja di Krama forged the five keris without writing down a note. For each keris he was working weeks. When we see the results, the five keris differ in the main dimensions only a few millimeters maximal. The thickness of the blades only differ tenth of millimeters.
To achieve such a result he must have been an excellent empu.

(I attached an image showing the five keris with the dimensions. I hope the image came over).

This brings me on the discussion of the mantra's and praying.
To obtain exact predefined results forging a keris, and especially to obtain a result with an obligatory pamor, after welding sometimes hundreds of layers, you will have to be very alert during the work.
One wrong maneuver and the work is lost (or a new pamor is invented). You will see the results only, at the end of the process. In case of a mistake a lot of material (in some cases very expensive meteorite material) is lost, as well as a large quantity of fuel and the cost for labor of at least three persons for weeks.

Not writing down the steps an empu makes during forging, i can understand that the empu will be praying and singing mantra's to keep fully concentrated.
This still besides his religion and the help of God he could obtain in this way.

[A. G. Maisey]

Seerp, when we discuss the making of keris, we are not discussing a mere blacksmith function, we are discussing a socio-cultural function of a culture and society that has very, very different standards and mores to European cultures and societies.

What you have said may (or may not) be true for the culture and society in which you live. It is most definitely not true for the culture and society of Jawa today, and probably this was even more true of Javanese culture and society of past times.

I was taught how to make keris by Mpu Suparman. My knowledge of keris making was added to by Mpu Pauzan Pusposukadgo. But before I gained knowledge and understanding from these two men I was taught basic blacksmithing by Gordon Blackwell, who was one of the last traditionally trained blacksmiths in Australia; Gordon came out of his apprenticeship in a country town in NSW just after the end of WWII.

Gordon was more than happy to teach me as much as I had the time and ability to learn, and he actively encouraged the learning and continuation of his craft with anybody who wished to learn.

Before I was ever taught anything by my Javanese teachers, and working with only what I had learnt from Gordon Blackwell, I taught myself to forge weld high carbon steel (01), wrought iron, and nickel.

I was at that time attempting to copy the work of Bill Moran, but in Australia in the late 1970's I was unable to find anybody who could teach me to forge weld high carbon steel or nickel. Gordon taught me to weld mild steel and wrought iron, but in the 1970's in Australia, the art of welding high carbon steel had been lost. I needed to teach myself. It took about 12 months of trial and error before I successfully forge welded high carbon steel, nickel and wrought iron. My forge was and always was, a deep bed, bottom blown coke or charcoal forge. In the late 1980's I used a gas forge for some welding, and welding in gas is no more difficult than making a chocolate cake --- maybe less difficult than making a cake. But all my early work was in coke or charcoal.

Before I was taught by my Javanese teachers I had already made a small, crude keris with mlumah pamor, as well as a lot of damascus and nickel damascus knife blades.

Both Mpu Suparman and Mpu Pauzan Pusposukadgo were very, very careful with passing information to me, and would only add to my existing knowledge and understanding when they were quite certain that I was ready to receive new information. Both men often cautioned me that the knowledge I was being given was for me alone, in other words I was not free to pass that information on to anybody else until the information was mine alone to pass on. This information has now become mine alone, as both my teachers have moved to a higher realm.

In fact, a competent man working alone, can make the forging from which a keris with a mlumah pamor is carved, in 2 or 3 eight hour days.

The time taken to make a keris is mostly cold work, ie, bench work. Mpu Suparman usually took about 12 to 14 days to carve a keris, working with traditional tools.

The shortest time it ever took me to carve a keris, again working with traditional tools, was 14 days, that keris was forged in two days, so it took 16 days total to make.

The longest time it ever took me to make a keris was 49 man days --- I say "man days" because the forge work took three 8 hour days working with two strikers; this keris used a pamor miring.

In making a keris, the easy part is the forge work. The difficult part is the cold work.

I emphasise:- in the making of a keris the forge work is easy, even using traditional hand tools and traditional forge; the really difficult part comes with creating the keris from the forging, this creation requires interpretation of a state of mind and a world view that can only be learnt from the appropriate teachers.

In respect of Gronemann's writing, it will be clear to anybody who has ever forged a keris that he either did not understand everything he saw, or he was not permitted to be present during the entire process. I will not elaborate in this.