Pakem and Keris

[Rick]

As I understand it the kingdoms of old Jawa each had a Book (or similar file) containing line drawings of the various keris dhapurs of that particular kingdom .
Only members of royalty could designate an accepted dhapur .
Am I laboring under a delusion ?

I would love some clarification and more detail on this subject .

Even some pictures of these keraton pages ??

One of the criteria we judge the quality of a keris by is its adherence to the constraints of the drawn line; correct ?

So we work for perfection within a strictly proscribed form; correct ?

[lemmythesmith]

Hi Rick, Marco posted these a while back, drawings by Empu Djeno. Don't know if these were the accepted sanctioned dapur, but they look good to me.

http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showth...ighlight=djeno

[Mick]

Rick

There are two different copies of line drawings of Dapurs from the Surakarta court floating around. There are about 160 dapurs of kerises and 51 dapurs of tombaks in these drawings.

One copy is a xerox of full size drawings and the other is a copy of reduced size drawings collected in a bound printing entitled "Dhapur, Buku Gambar Bentuk Keris Dan Tombak". My copy of the book has several missing pages (replaced with double copies of the next page).

These seem to have come out of the Kraton under PBX in 1920. These are not different copies of the same thing as one copy is the blade itself (which is the real intention of the listings) while the other has a Solo grip on the blades of the kerises while the tombaks are plain steel in both issues.

Now that I got to that portion of the new translation of Groneman's work on the Javanese Kreis there is a bunch of this information there also. I haven't cross checked this info with the others yet.

If you can get hold of a copy of one of these it should satisfy your wish.

I also just noticed that the bound book I mentioned is advertised in the back of Kris magazine Vol 13/2008 for Rp 150,000 or 250,000 depending on the paper size. Email majalah_keris@yahoo.co.id and see if they can help you out. They are bundling up loose issues of Keris magazine and selling them on the same page. They might be selling all of the other book that are advertised in this area of the magazine.

mick

[Rick]

Thanks Mick .

[A. G. Maisey]

Depends what we want to think of as "Old Jawa", Rick.

The pakems of which I know are all pretty recent productions, by which I mean all produced within the last couple of hundred years at the extreme outside.

I believe that in the Old Jawa of , say, prior to the Java War, the names and attributes of the various dhapurs would have been part of the special knowledge of highly placed empus.

Perhaps the bureaucracy of the kratons only became involved after the keris became elevated to court art, and many of its traditions had already been forgotten.

There is a degree of variation between the pakems of which I know, and this is only to be expected, bearing in mind the environment that has produced these pakems.

For many of the older dhapur, we can find reference to the empu who made that dhapur, and under which ruler he worked.

For more recent dhapur, this information is lacking.

However, when we think of "information" we must consider the concept of information in a Javanese way, and what this means is that the information presented as fact, is actually a concensus of opinion that has morphed into myth ---or maybe the other way round.In any case, it is Javanese fact, not necessarily fact as some of us may consider fact to be.

However, having said that, yes, if we make a particular dhapur, then we must make it exactly according to the required ricikan for that dhapur, and we need to follow an identified pakem in determination of the required ricikan.

[Rick]

Thanks Alan,
At what point in time did the keris become court art ?

[A. G. Maisey]

I do not know Rick. But I can guess.

We know that during the Kartasura period there was a resurgence of Javanese national pride, we also know that by the early 19th century the keris in Jawa had become not much more than an item of dress. During the 19th century and through into the early 20th century Javanese pride was taking a beating from the extremes of Dutch administration.

In an attempt to regain some national pride it seems that Javanese attention became more focussed on those things over which the Javanese themselves had control, and in which the Dutch overlords could not interfere, or perhaps did not want to interfere.

Thus "Javaneseness" found itself being expressed in those things that were for the most part outside the understanding of the foriegners.

Those things that prior to the Javanese War had only a touch of mysticism associated with them were elevated to a mystic stature that was out of reach of the foriegners, even though a couple of hundred years earlier, the superstition and belief in magic that was harboured by the Dutch at that time very probably contributed to the Javanese attitude to mysticism and superstition.

By the 19th century the Dutch had moved forward from their 17th century beliefs and superstitions, but the social conditions in Jawa had seen an intensification of these beliefs amongst the Javanese, in part, as a balance to the oppression of the Dutch.

So, by the mid 19th century the keris in Jawa was well and truly a magical object, as Europeans understood magic, whereas previously it had been a power object as that was understood within the framework of traditional Javanese society.

We can find examples of what we now refer to as "keris art" in keris that date to the 17th century , and prior to this, however, I doubt that at that time we were looking at an art form , but rather at art being used to ornament an object that still had a number of practical uses.

My own feeling is that the keris was elevated to a defined art form in the courts of Jawa as a part of that response of the Javanese rulers to Dutch overlordship. To put that within a time-frame, perhaps mid-19th century forward. It certainly was in full blossom by the PBX era---roughly 1890 to 1940.

Bear in mind, this is opinion only.