Figural !

[asomotif]

Nice ivory hilt from museum Nusantara in Delft.
The museum will close next week 6th january due to lack of funds...

[asomotif]

Bali, newly made.

[Rick]

Nice .
I like these polychrome handles .

[asian-keris]

Like

[Marcokeris]

I like too

[Rick]

Me 3.

[asomotif]

I like 4 delayed x-mas present.

ps do you have more pictures / back / side ?

[David]

I'll jump on the bandwagon...yowzah!!!

[Battara]

A little unusual - great example!

[T. Koch]

I hope I don't annoy anyone by posting this guy of David's again:



I just think it is the coolest keris hilt I've ever seen! I don't know what it is about him, but he just set's something off in me and makes me smile at the same time. I mean, he looks like a shark with a handlebar mustache for gods sake!!

Rick could you tell us something about it - new, old? Do you know who he's meant to represent?

The Hanuman in horn just above is also really nice and crisply carved IMO. You're very lucky to have these guys with you.


Best wishes and may this thread live on forever, - Thor

[David]

Well, no annoyance for me Thor...he makes me smile as well. This hilt is contemporary in manufacture, but i have seen at least one genuinely old version of this character in almost the exact same pose so i'd say it has a traditional basis. Not sure exactly which wayang character this is or if it is just meant to reference the wayang in general.
I am not sure which hanuman in horn you are referring to. Are you sure it is hanuman and are you sure it is horn?

[T. Koch]

Mmm, no and no. I guess it could also be stained ivory or dark wood although it seems the material looks really hard. In regards to the deity/figure, I don't own any hilts myself, so just trying to slowly learn from you guys here on the forum. It's this fellow I mean: http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/attach...id=95812&stc=1

Thank you for the info on the shark guy - I don't suppose you know the name of the artist? Someone like the shark guy could easily start a collection of hilts with me. Although I guess that's another slippery slope, and I am trying sooo hard to be good and focus my collecting.


All the best, - Thor

[David]

Originally Posted by T. Koch

It's this fellow I mean: http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/attach...id=95812&stc=1

So sorry to fool you there Thor, but this hilt is made of an ebony wood. The little insets are ivory though.

[rasjid]

Not sure about this one. The handle is wrapping like Jawa Demam but looks like a snake? Komodo or something the carver's thinking?

[asomotif]

picture taken last week at the Gemeente Museum Den Haag.

[ganjawulung]

Picture taken at Ganjawulung's Collection...

[Gavin Nugent]

One of my favorites.

Gavin

[Rick]

Almost reminds one of the Green Man from another culture .

[ganjawulung]

Some cirebonese hilts with 'buta bajang' motives and also 'pulungan'...

Ganjawulung Collection

[ganjawulung]

Some cirebonese 'buta bajang' hilt and Rajamala of Tegal, Central Java....

Ganjawulung Collection

[A. G. Maisey]

Ex Puri Badung

[Jean]

Originally Posted by ganjawulung

Some cirebonese hilts with 'buta bajang' motives and also 'pulungan'...

Ganjawulung Collection

Dear Ganja,
What is the difference betwen the 2 types, I observe that some specimens wear a sort of crown and Garuda mungkur in the back, is it what makes the difference?
Regards

[Jean]

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

Ex Puri Badung

What a masterpiece, congratulations!
Regards

[Gavin Nugent]

Originally Posted by Rick

Almost reminds one of the Green Man from another culture .

Vanna Ghiringhelli notes this fella as an unknown demon....can anyone quanitify this "Unknown Deman"

Gavin

[VVV]

Most probably it was supposed to be a Yaksha.
A better reference work for old keris and their original symbolism (as an alternative to the contemporary interpretations) is Kris disk by the late Karsten Sejr Jensen.

Michael

[David]

Originally Posted by VVV

Most probably it was supposed to be a Yaksha.
A better reference work for old keris and their original symbolism (as an alternative to the contemporary interpretations) is Kris disk by the late Karsten Sejr Jensen.

Michael

I don't own the Kris Disk, but would love to know more about Jensen's determining factors for this attribution. Was it purely because the figures are vegetal in form or were there other clues he followed that lead to this theory? Yaksha as depicted in surrounding cultures do not appear in such abstracted form, though in Thailand they do often have green faces, probably as a hint to their nature-spirit qualities.

[A. G. Maisey]

In respect of the hilt shown by Gavin in Post # 77.

Mention has been made of the opinions of Vanna Ghiringhelli and of Karsten Sejr. Jensen, and it is true that the opinions of both these people must be given due consideration.

Vanna Ghiringhelli is a noted academic who has a very firm foundation in Hindu culture, certainly more mainstream than specifically early Javanese, but her depth of understanding of this mainstream permits an informed analysis of the streams which have their source in the mainstream.

Karsten Sejr. Jensen was a dedicated researcher with a very high level of interest in the keris, and this permitted him to form some very interesting ideas which must be given careful consideration. However, as he himself states:-

"--- Therefore the interpretations, that I give them, are only possible interpretations and there may be many layers under and above the meaning that I indicate.---"


My own opinion is that at this remove it is a total impossibility to affix any specific identity to any of these figural interpretations found in keris hilts.

Indeed, even at the time when one of these hilts was carved, no person apart from the client and/or the carver may have known the true identity of the figure that was represented in the carving.

Why might this be so?

Because the figure may have been intended to represent an ancestor of the client personified as a yaksa (Jav.). The yaksa itself may have been intended as the personification of a deity.

In Javanese thought, most especially early Javanese thought, when a person passed to the other world, that person's earthly spirit could be absorbed into the unseen essence of a being from the Unseen World. Rulers and other great notables were often represented after death as deities, for example Gajah Mada as Ganesha.

Deities could present themselves as Yaksas, Lord Siwa himself was not averse to assuming the form of a yaksa when it served his purpose.

So, even though a figure may be in the form of a yaksa, that does not necessarily mean that it was intended as a simple representation of a yaksa, but may have been intended as one of the higher deities which had absorbed the spirit of an ancestor.

The client of course knew who the figural representation was intended to be, as in early days did the artist who carved the figure, but nobody else was likely to know.

One does not gather power by providing gratuitous information.
This is, and seems to always have been, a basic element of the Javanese world.

Thus if one commissions a representation of a yaksa that in fact is intended as a vessel for the spirit of an ancestor, is it wise to let anybody else know the true nature of the representation?

In light of the above, I think that I am in the Vanna Ghiringhelli camp:- "unknown".

[VVV]

Originally Posted by David

I don't own the Kris Disk, but would love to know more about Jensen's determining factors for this attribution. Was it purely because the figures are vegetal in form or were there other clues he followed that lead to this theory? Yaksha as depicted in surrounding cultures do not appear in such abstracted form, though in Thailand they do often have green faces, probably as a hint to their nature-spirit qualities.

David, I didn't write that Jensen state it is a yaksha (he usually calls it "a raksasa prince").
You really should try to get hold of the Kris disk. Besides being like a Stone or van Zonnenveld for the keris world regarding that it compiles most of what has been written about it outside Indonesia, it also is the largest and best picture source for complete "historic" keris (complete=the dress is also old and have not been changed according to the present fashion).

Yes, Alan, a yaksha is not always a yaksha and, like the quote from Jensen, there are always several layers in an interpretation. But that is quite obvious for all outsider interpretations (and quite often even the insiders themselves are not aware of all the symbolism and meanings in a motif they use).
I prefer to use the short answer in a forum like this but I am aware that we are living in a postmodern era where nothing is neither black or white nor is there only one correct answer to any question...

Michael

[Sajen]

Originally Posted by SwordsAntiqueWeapons

One of my favorites.

Gavin

Hello Gavin,

here the brother of your hilt! I personally would call it a putra satu hilt in abstract form.

Regards,
Detlef

[A. G. Maisey]

I'm in complete agreement with you Michael, but I prefer to take the concepts of "truth", "fact", and "accuracy", just a little further.

There was an economist named Fritz Machlup. He was an Austrian, but he migrated to America before WWII.

He came up with the proposal that there was a "half-life of knowledge", this was given as the length of time that had to pass before half of the knowledge in any specific field was either shown to be untrue or was replaced with a more up-to-date version.

As time goes by the residual half of knowledge that remains from the initial degradation of the field becomes less and less so that eventually nothing, or perhaps almost nothing is left that can still be considered to be true.

Machlup died some time in the early 1960's, just about the time I was being taught about his ideas.

Not long ago a mathematician named Sam Arbesman published a book called "The Half-Life of Facts". Arbesman has demonstrated that the ideas that we accept as "facts" are slowly being replaced, and although we can never guess when any particular "fact" is going to go under, we can predict when half the facts in any specific field are going become out-dated.

An idea not dissimilar to Machlup's idea.

The accepted "facts" in any field have differing lives. Half the facts in the field of maths will be revised/replaced in about 9 or 10 years. Half the facts in the field of physics are good for about 13 years. And so on.

Now, with the keris, we're not dealing with perceived "facts" for most of the time, rather, we are dealing with opinions and beliefs.

I'm not at all sure how we can estimate the half-life of keris opinions, but I guess somebody who is much better at math than I am could come up with a formula. However, its probably not all that important how long our opinions and beliefs resist change, what is important is that we recognise that those opinions and beliefs will change, and that at some time in the future much, or most, of what we accept as "fact" today will have been demonstrated to be incorrect.

For this reason, I would most humbly suggest that none of us should become so entwined in our own beliefs and opinions that we are unable to give consideration to the beliefs and opinions of others.