First Post - Identification Assistance Much Appreciated

[David]

Originally Posted by oariff

Thanks David. Just wondering - Lets say it was Mbok's keris. Taking into consideration her life span, tools, materials etc, how many of these sombro"s would she have produced in her Empu journey.

Would it perhaps be better for me to display this sombro without the hilt and sheath? or will that be considered to be against keris protocol?

Nyai Mbok would be an honorific meaning a senior/elder woman/mother, not her actual name. The question of how many of these keris could have been made in Empu Sombro's lifetime is one i am afraid i could not answer. The stories about her say that she carried these keris threaded on a string to market or around the area to sell them, so that would imply that she had many to sell at a time, and these are rather simply constructed keris that probably did not take a great deal of time to forge. So i suppose she could have sold hundreds of these keris in her lifetime. But who knows. These many stories and legends about her, the most fantastic being that she quenched her blades with her labia. Image doing that hundreds of times! When we deal with stories this old it is impossible to verify much. This is why we say that keris of this form are called Keris Sombro, though that doesn't necessarily mean they were all (if any) actually created by the legendary female Empu.